The Tale of an Infinite Regressor

< Chapter 6 >

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Operator I

Shin Noah

1

How long I survive in a specific iteration varies greatly.

Sometimes, I enjoy a mayfly life, dying within a day of regressing. Other times, I struggle through for over 20 years only to freeze to death. In the ninth year, I might be killed by an alien with tentacle spikes, and in the seventh year, I might die from a meteorite falling to Earth, experiencing what it must have felt like to be a dinosaur.

Even I, who have received special privileges as a regressor, am not exempt from such fates. How much worse must it be for others?

Most Awakeners don’t even last 10 years, let alone 20. Some die within five years, and others within just two.

Those with power die because of their power, and those without power die because of their lack thereof.

In a world heading towards destruction, the reason for death is merely a matter of naming, and every day of living was a cause of death.

However, there was one Awakener who died sooner than anyone else.

He was known as SG-Man.

Of course, ‘SG-Man’ wasn’t his real name.

It was simply a shorter way of saying ‘f*cking nonsense man,’ a nickname I gave him in my mind.

I only learned SG-Man’s real name in the fiftieth iteration.

2

The fastest dying man in the world.

That was the image I had of SG-Man.

To introduce his story, it’s necessary first to describe the scene I see immediately after I regress.

“What? What is this? Where am I?”

“Huh? Busan Station? I was just in the park…”

“Leader? Leader, where are you?”

Every time I regress, I wake up in the waiting room of Busan Station.

Apart from me, 398 ordinary people are forcibly summoned here. There’s no rule to the summoning; there’s even a Japanese person dragged all the way from Fukuoka.

Hundreds of people are panicked by the sudden situation, and then suddenly, something appears in the air.

“Ah, hello, everyone!”

It was the tutorial fairy.

A character so deformed it looked like it had just jumped out of a 2D world alone in reality.

“Hmm? The numbers seem a little low… Anyway, you must be quite surprised to be summoned to such a place suddenly, right? But don’t worry! I’m here to guide you kindly right from the start!”

I’m sorry to say this about the fairy, but I couldn’t help but worry.

First off, its way of speaking was idiotic. One could argue that a person’s speech is like ink stamped from the printer of their character; if the ink is a mess, it’s fair to assume there’s a serious problem with the printer.

More seriously, the fairy was floating in mid-air.

Human civilization hadn’t matured enough to accommodate alien life forms capable of levitating without any devices. Consequently, screams of “Aaagh!” erupted throughout the great hall.

“Ah! It’s okay, it’s okay! Now, now. I’m here to explain various things to you! You’ve all received basic education, right? I’m like the homeroom teacher of this great hall at Busan Station! As much as you follow my words, I will treat you kindly. So from now on…”

“Shut the fuck up!”

Everyone paused.

A majestic roar echoed.

“What the hell are you talking about!”

He appeared to be in his early twenties.

A man with tattoo sleeves on his arms was gesticulating at the fairy, his triceps muscles flexing.

Yes, that was SG-Man, the ‘fucking nonsense man.’

“Huh… Yes?”

“Shut the fuck up! If you suddenly drag people here, you should start with an apology, not spouting nonsense!”

SG-Man had a very booming voice. The people around him instinctively stepped back.

The fairy was so taken aback by his forthright outcry.

“No, uh. It’s not really my doing, I’m just a coordinator here…”

“Shut the fuck up!”

The fairy flinched.

By now, you might have guessed why I came to call SG-Man as such.

He was the type of man who couldn’t say a word without prefacing it with “fuck,” a richness in diction that one might acquire only from working on a construction site.

“Anyway, you just said you’re the coordinator! Eh? Aren’t you going to apologize?”

“No… I’ve heard from my seniors that such people are rare these days. Humans have become too cunning to be provoked anymore…”

The fairy’s face fell.

Suddenly, a notebook appeared in its hand. Flipping through the pages, the fairy muttered, “What was it that they told me to do in such situations?”

“Aha. Here it is.”

“Shut the fuck up! Are you making fun of human speech?”

“Hey.”

The fairy waved her wand—summoned before anyone noticed—with a light flick. SG-Man’s head exploded with a bang.

“Is it done now? Come on! Everyone, follow my lead!”

The fairy grinned broadly, like a child expecting her prank to have worked perfectly.

What the fairy had not considered was the average sensibility of the people gathered here, also known as morality or ethics.

“Aaaiiiieeek!”

The owner of this entertaining scream was Sim Aryeon (I know the names of all the survivors at Busan Station’s waiting hall). Unfortunately for her, she was right next to SG-Man and ended up drenched in a shower of bright red blood.

“People are dying…! People! Eek, they’re dead! Aiiiieeeek! People, they’re dead!”

This person ran away faster than anyone else, splashing blood and guts in every direction as she did.

The grotesque scene made everyone realize the harsh reality.

“Kyaaaaaak!”

“It’s murder! It’s murder!”

“Run awaaaay!”

Nearly four hundred people started fleeing in chaos after Sim Aryeon.

The fairy reached out with “Oh,” “There,” “That way,” “Wait a moment,” but these gestures only incited more fear.

In just a few seconds, only about ten people, including me, were left in the waiting hall.

“……”

“Uh……”

The fairy’s face fell.

“The guidelines were all wrong! It said that if I just eliminated one person as an example, everyone would calm down!”

SG-Man’s headless body lay alone on the floor of the waiting hall.

So, I went alone into the souvenir shop to farm my exclusive item, the silver bells.

Now, everyone will understand why I never knew SG-Man’s real name.

Commonly in novels, ‘the extra who defies the tutorial fairy and gets executed.’

That was who SG-Man was.

Honestly, I had never felt any emotions towards SG-Man.

In any iteration, SG-Man always rushed headlong into the fairy.

As the iterations of my life diversified, the original event of ‘SG-Man dying at the hands of the fairy’ always occurred.

‘…What would happen if I saved that man?’

So, it was not strange that I suddenly felt curious.

‘Yes. Let’s save him.’

“Who knows?”

“I tried saving and awakening him, and it turned out he was the teleportation ability user that Old Man Sho had so desperately longed for.”

“By the way, I’ve always been quite susceptible to curiosity. It wasn’t always like this, but as I went through more iterations, my personality changed naturally.”

“During the 50th iteration, I decided to satisfy my curiosity.”

“Oh, hello there! Everyone! Huh? There seems to be a few missing… Anyway, you must have been quite surprised to be summoned to such a place all of a sudden, but—”

But the one who was really surprised was the fairy.

The reason was simple. I had sprung from the ground and reached right in front of the fairy in an instant.

“Huh?”

My shadow cast over the fairy’s dumbfounded face.

I wasn’t particularly sorry.

Before the fairy could even fully close its eyelids, my brute palm had grabbed its head.

I circulated the vital energy (罡氣) around my hand.

With a playful pop, the sound of the fairy’s small head bursting echoed. For the fairy, who had always been exploding the heads of other humans, this was perhaps an ironic end.

“Eh?”

“What just happened…?”

With that, I landed on the ground as people murmured around me.

It was merely a momentary fight.

Given that it was still early in my regressions, it was unlikely that anyone could have properly followed the fight between the fairy and me with their eyes.

Ah, and not just the head—I had shredded the rest of the body too. Probably, people only perceived that ‘a small life form appeared in the air and then suddenly disappeared.’

“Huh?”

Even the man who was about to roar stopped with his mouth open, only managing to let out a foolish sound.

I approached him and greeted him politely.

“Hello.”

“Huh? Oh, yes… Hello?”

For the first time, I heard the man speak something other than his usual curse.

It was a historic moment in its own right.

Indeed, the man was a true macho.

“Who might you be?”

The term ‘that side,’ while maintaining honorifics, also seemed to grasp his pride and determination.

But after witnessing me slice a monster at Busan Station with one stroke, ‘that side’ changed to ‘you,’ and by the time the severed heads of the monsters exceeded fifty, it shifted to ‘……’

When we finally cleared the gate, the term of address changed even more dramatically.

“Umm… Brother?”

“Yes.”

SG-Man carefully scrutinized my expression with a nervous gaze.

“You seem like a formidable person when dealing with monsters, so why bother bringing someone like me along…?”

“There are two answers. One is the truth but hard to accept, and the other is a lie but plausible. Which one would you prefer to hear?”

“Uh, well, the truth, of course?”

“I am a regressor and am currently repeating my 50th iteration of this world. Each time, you have died in the waiting room. This time I was curious about what kind of person you are, so I decided to save you and have you move with me for a while.”

“Uh…?”

SG-Man’s face, which had looked at me with a mix of admiration and fear, suddenly contorted as if to say ‘What are you, some kind of nerd?’ through his facial muscles alone.

I felt somewhat disheartened. The 35th iteration, when I met the Saint, was a kind of turning point, and since then, I had occasionally confessed to being a regressor.

Yet, aside from the Saint, there was still no one who believed me. Why?

“In fact, I am a member of Special Task Force 5, which has been prepared by the National Intelligence Service in anticipation of such situations. I am requesting your cooperation.”

“Ah, I see.”

“My code name is Mortician. May I ask your name?”

“It’s Seo Gyu. Sir, please feel free to call me informally.”

“Is that so?”

Seo Gyu. That was SG-Man’s real name.

I had realized how crucial ‘companions’ were in the journey to prevent the world’s destruction. Thus, I actively sought and recruited promising individuals who would later grow into A-grade Awakeners.

The 50th iteration was no different. I continued to enlist more party members while traveling with Seo Gyu.

Having already identified through countless iterations the most effective ways to utilize their abilities, my party members grew stronger by the day.

“…I seem to lack talent, sir.”

Seo Gyu did not enjoy the special benefits that came with being a regressor.

That was to be expected. It was the first time Seo Gyu had survived the tutorial and formed a party with me.

I didn’t even know what abilities he might awaken. I was in no position to provide him personalized coaching.

“Ah, damn. Everyone else is growing just fine, why am I the only one…”

From Seo Gyu’s perspective, he might have felt like an underachiever amidst all the A-grade prospects and monstrous geniuses, inevitably leading to feelings of inferiority.

But I knew all too well how to handle situations like this.

“Saint,”

“Yes?”

“Please send a message to Seo Gyu.”

The Saint of National Salvation.

It was time for the legendary Pokémon I had kept tightly hidden to make its move.

At my request, occasionally, the Saint would send messages to the party members, sometimes urging them, sometimes cheering them on.

[‘The Lord of the Red Horse assures you that your talent is genuine!’]

[‘The Conqueror of the Alps dispels your doubts.’]

Naturally, I had thoroughly grasped the information about the party members. Family relationships, educational backgrounds, past traumas, special skills, and more.

All this information was passed on to the Saint. The Saint provided psychological counseling to the trainees based on this top-tier personal information.

Legally, this would constitute a violation of privacy laws and would be punishable, but since civilization had collapsed, the laws on data protection had become somewhat ineffective. Even before the collapse, it wasn’t a law that was strictly adhered to.

Indeed, the Saint was an S-class Awakener with the ‘clairvoyant’ ability.

With my information leak added to her capabilities, the party members had no doubt that the Constellations were really watching every little thing they did.

And now the Constellations were vouching for their talents?

“…I will train hard and definitely awaken my abilities!”

Seo Gyu was fired up.

Our strategy, a duo between me and the Saint, was perfect.

To the objections that it was brainwashing or gaslighting, I would remain silent.

Eventually, one midnight, Seo Gyu came to find me secretly, looking very serious.

“Um, big brother.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I think I might have awakened last night.”

Finally!

I could feel the anticipation swelling.

The victim of the tutorial. The man who had been the first to leave the stage in all fifty iterations.

What would his ability be?

A jackpot or a dud? Either way, I was confident I wouldn’t be too disappointed since my curiosity would be satisfied.

I shook hands with Seo Gyu.

“Congratulations. I always believed you would do it.”

“Th, thank you. It’s all thanks to you, big brother.”

“So, what’s the ability?”

“Ah. That’s… uh, how should I explain this?”

Seo Gyu’s hand, clasping mine, lacked strength.

His expression was also ambiguous. Despite having achieved the awakening he had longed for, he didn’t seem very happy.

‘So it was a dud after all.’

Seeing his face, I too folded a piece of confetti in my heart. High-tier abilities weren’t something that appeared so easily.

“What’s the matter? Don’t hold back, tell me straight.”

“No, it’s not that… it’s a bit tricky to explain in words… Big brother, do you carry a cell phone? Could you take a look at it?”

“A cell phone?”

“Yes.”

Although puzzled, I obediently pulled out my smartphone.

The phone was dead. Half a year had passed since the gate incident, and most means of communication had failed.

Phones, internet, radios, radars—everything had been contaminated by the anomalies.

“Could you turn on the internet and go to the address I tell you?”

“Uh…?”

And then I witnessed something astonishing.

The internet, which should not have been accessible, was connected.

I felt surprise, an emotion I hadn’t experienced in a long time, as I manipulated the smartphone.

The internet still showed as dead, and other apps were non-functional. However, somehow, the site Seo Gyu directed me to was running smoothly.

“What is this…?”

It was a forum-style website.

Like the old PC communication days, the design was extremely crude.

Seo Gyu, as if showing off a childhood drawing to someone, said shyly,

“Um, this is my awakened ability. Running a site.”