The Tales of an Infinite Regressor

[Translator - Jjescus]

[Proofreader - Gun]

Chapter 132

──────

Eschatologist IV

5

Let’s talk about Old Scho.

Flashback. A distant past.

A very long time ago, during the 21st turn, I once had a drunken heart-to-heart with Old Scho on a sky-blue bridge.

“Embalmer, what do you think will happen to the world after we die?”

“After we die?”

Old Scho and I were probably the only two regressors in this world.

So, every now and then, we’d excitedly discuss topics that “only regressors could truly get absorbed in.” Just like now.

“Well… at the point when the two of us die… I guess the world would also regress along with us. Time would rewind.”

“What if that’s not the case?”

“Sorry?”

“What if the world continues even after we’re dead?”

“But that wouldn’t make any sense, would it? We die and then immediately wake up again. How could the world continue?”

“Listen carefully.”

The old regressor’s theory went like this:

――――――――――

A. The [World After a Bad Ending] Hypothesis.

Explanation: Even if a regressor dies, the world does not regress. Time continues until the universe meets its end.

Only after a complete end does the world ‘roll back.’ The server resets. However, for some reason, the memories of Old Scho and me, the regressors, are preserved without being wiped.

――――――――――

“Ah… So even though we subjectively feel like we’ve just woken up after dying, objectively, we only wake up after the world has been destroyed?”

“Right. In this case, our ability would be closer to [memory preservation] rather than [regression]. It aligns pretty well, considering that you, doctor, possess perfect memory.”

“Oh…”

“There’s another hypothesis too.”

――――――――――

B. The [Parallel World] Hypothesis.

Explanation: If a regressor dies, their consciousness and memories are transferred to a ‘different parallel world.’

Even though it may look the same, the world they now live in is entirely separate from the one they previously lived in.

However, the differences between the worlds are not observable to the regressors.

――――――――――

“If the parallel world hypothesis is correct, our ability might need to be called [world line transfer].”

“This is a perspective I’ve never considered before.”

“That’s because you, Embalmer, wander around with that empty head of yours without any thought. You’re so ignorant. You really need to study. Calling social democrats commies, mocking Germany’s history at every chance—you're utterly uneducated. You’re a failure as a human, a failure in character, and a failure in personality.”

“Did you just ambush me with slander here…?”

“I support the parallel world hypothesis.”

I blinked in surprise.

“Uh… why?”

“Do you really think it makes sense for the entire world, for time itself, to regress just because two mere human beings died?”

Old Scho swirled his soju glass.

“It’s much more plausible that only our consciousness moved to another world, don’t you think?”

“Hmm.”

Listening to Old Scho, I felt an inexplicable unease.

If, as he said, it’s absurd to turn back the world’s time, then isn’t it equally absurd to transfer an individual’s consciousness and memories to another parallel world?

In fact, theoretically, it might be more burdensome to assume the existence of countless parallel worlds.

“Then, all the worlds we originally lived in… all the ‘parallel worlds’ we’ve passed through have been destroyed, haven’t they? We’re just wandering from one vanished home to another.”

“Exactly! We keep telling ourselves that we’re saving the world by retrying over and over… but in reality, the people of those many worlds are already dead. The monsters have won.”

Looking back now, like most drunken ramblings, Old Scho’s passionate speech lacked consistency.

If we assume that Old Scho sincerely believed in the [World After a Bad Ending] or [Parallel World] hypotheses—

Then shouldn’t he have valued his life even more?

If it wasn’t simply about turning back time, and if indeed countless worlds had met their end, then the lives of Old Scho and me bore the weight of ‘an entire world.’

Since each time we failed, another world would perish.

Yet, Old Scho was soon to take a long vacation.

Why was that?

Did it mean he trusted me that much? Believing that even if he gave up, I wouldn’t?

Or was his lover far more precious to him than a world that had entrusted its weight to the likes of us?

Between a world and a love, is the latter really heavier?

The drunk old man staggered.

“Isn’t it really a damnable world, Embalmer? I… I really don’t… don’t know why this is happening. I just don’t know.”

“Ah—old man. You should get up. If you sleep here, you’ll catch a cold. Oh, seriously. This guy always relies on his immortal body and does this.”

…It was as if the old man before me was like a Sherpa struggling to bear an even heavier burden on his already weighed-down shoulders.

It was a double-edged stance chosen by a captain on a sinking ship.

Stance A: "I cannot afford to fail here. Because if I fail, the world will perish."

Stance B: "But even if I do fail here, there’s nothing I can do about it. Because this ship is carrying far too much cargo for just one person like me to bear."

Yes.

Old Scho was undoubtedly driving himself to the brink so that he could justify either outcome.

“I’m sorry, Embalmer… I’m so sorry…”

“Hey, what’s with this old German man suddenly mixing in a dialect? This is driving me crazy. Should I just throw you in a gas chamber?”

“You insane… racist bastard…”

“That label doesn’t work when a white guy uses it on an Asian, you know?”

In the 21st turn, I was still young. I couldn’t see through Old Scho’s state of mind.

So even as I supported his drunken body, I couldn’t support his heart.

If I had been more experienced. If I had gone through more strange and terrifying things, I would have told Old Scho back then.

In a calm voice:

“Old man.”

“Whether it’s the [World After a Bad Ending] or the [Parallel World], whether it’s true or false doesn’t matter right now.”

“Because all of those are nothing but Void and Anomaly.”

6

End of the flashback.

Let’s rewind the perspective by a few thousand years.

The reunion with Old Scho in the unconscious world was the worst.

“Ah. Guildmaster, we’ve been spotted.”

Koyori muttered, but there was no need to inform me kindly.

Old Scho was rushing at me with a wild swing of a steel pipe.

“……!”

A Sword Master’s strike was faster than sound.

Have you ever seen a night sky engraved with the faint glow of the Milky Way like a subtle jewel?

You can see it every day if you visit a clean-apocalypse world without pollution and fine dust.

And you can witness it in Old Scho’s aura as well.

Kwarrrrr!

The ‘night-sky-colored’ aura charged straight at me, slicing through the building debris in its path as if it found them cumbersome.

[Translator - Jjescus]

[Proofreader - Gun]

This was the decisive reason Old Scho became known as the Sword Star. His blade contained the Milky Way and starlight.

The thunderous sound of the collapsing buildings echoed several beats slower than Old Scho’s attack.

It wasn’t until I barely managed to draw Doha and deflect Old Scho’s strike that the tremendous aftershock struck my hearing.

“Holy…?”

My hands tingled, and my whole body shook. My senses all screamed nausea.

Just one strike.

As the 261st turn, my heart sank just from defending against a single attack. For someone like me who relies on aura rather than martial arts, it felt like my MP had been halved instantly.

Suddenly, the spirit of Seo Gyu possessed my heart. The words "You fucking bastard, stop cheating so much!" slipped out of my mouth.

“Damn, you weren’t this strong before!”

“……”

“No matter how empty or strange you’ve become, the original you were just an old man who disappeared after the 25th turn. How can you be this strong?”

Old Scho remained expressionless. It must be because his tiny brain folds and facial muscles had atrophied as he fell into Void.

-……, ……, …….

Old Scho’s lips kept moving as he muttered something repeatedly.

Thanks to my time with Lee Hahyul, my lip-reading skills had developed to a high level. Even from a distance, I could roughly decipher what Old Scho was saying. After all, Germans had been somewhat vulnerable in the field of wiretapping since World War II.

The result of my eavesdropping was this:

“Adele, Adele, Adele, Adele, Adele, Adele, Adele.”

What the hell.

The Sword Demon raised the steel pipe again.

The intensity I felt from the tips of the old man’s fingers made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. At this rate, I was about to become regressor chicken on the old man’s dinner table tonight.

“Hah.”

At that moment, I came up with a brilliant idea.

I grabbed Koyori, who was standing by watching in spectator mode, and pushed her in front of me.

“Huh?”

“Koyori, let’s be friends!”

It was the forbidden secret technique passed down through the Korean peninsula: the Friend Shield.

Running away now would only risk being pursued by the corrupted regressor, the strange creature known as ‘Emett Schopenhauer.’

So, why not aim for mutual destruction?

As a guardian of human civilization, I always respected the Code of Hammurabi. An eye for an eye. Anomaly for Anomaly. Old Scho for Koyori.

If I could eliminate either the regressor’s anomaly or the brainwashing beam anomaly, it would be a win for me! Why bother worrying about means and methods?

“……”

Scho hesitated.

The old man, who had been poised to launch a barrage of attacks, suddenly stopped.

I mentally pumped my fist.

As expected, even Old Scho had to hesitate in front of the brainwashing beam. Even I, after crawling through 261 turns, could only avoid it with no real countermeasure, so how could some fresh-faced old man like him boast here?

"Um... Guildmaster?"

"What? I'm busy. Don't talk to me."

"But I think it would be better if I tell you."

Koyori, who had been reduced to a human shield in my left hand, spoke as if troubled.

"As you know, I am perceived as the ideal type that the other person would be most attracted to, right? So… who do you think I look like to that grandfather who’s reached his ending?"

"......"

Ah.

"AdeleAdeleAdeleAdeleAdeleAdeleAdeleAdeleAdeleAdeleAdeleAdele."

Around Old Scho, a 'night sky' unfolded.

To use the latest trends, this was domain expansion. Considering the old man’s age, it was more like a bounded field.

Old Scho's terrifying aura, coloring the ground and sky, extended from his feet. Suddenly, the night sky appeared in the middle of the day in a ruined city.

This was more than sword energy; it was killing intent.

This was the ultimate potential of Emett Schopenhauer, the human being. The extreme limit of his possibilities.

This was a realm that even I had never witnessed when Old Scho was in his prime in the original world, an incomprehensible level of transcendence.

"If he were maintaining his sanity, he wouldn’t confuse me with his beloved wife... But in this corrupted 'ending' state where he’s lost his reason, well, I’m at a loss too…"

"Cancel your brainwashing!"

"Haha, Guildmaster, you know that's passive and I can’t do anything about it. But more importantly, this is a big deal. To him, I must look like his beloved wife being held hostage by a kidnapper. Though, of course, I’m glad to have become friends with you, Guildmaster."

I immediately threw Koyori as far away as possible.

"Whoa-?"

She flew like a missile, maybe because she was originally from North Korea. I just hoped she would be faithful to her origins and explode at the end.

Naturally, the focus of the Old Scho Anomaly shifted from me to the Koyori Missile. The old man, a hopeless romantic, threw down the steel pipe and charged after Koyori.

My one and only chance.

I took off immediately. The protagonist of an infinite regression story should never miss a one-time opportunity.

"Adeleeeeeee!"

Boom. Bang. The city was being destroyed in real-time.

I could hear Old Scho’s desperate cries from far behind, but it wasn’t my concern.

I wished the two of them would live happily ever after――.

"Adele."

At that moment, I sensed a presence beside me.

There was no time to look back.

Slash!

Something cut through my protective aura, like tofu, slicing up to my neck.

'Ah.'

I fell forward in the same running motion.

My head soared into the air, and I barely managed to look to the side.

Old Scho, whom I thought I had sent far away, was suddenly right next to me, running 'alongside' me. His hand was stained with blood.

A close-range strike. With a single hand strike, he had decapitated me.

Koyori was held by Old Scho at his side. She looked at me—or more precisely, at my escaping head—and gave a wry smile.

My senses faded. Sound, consciousness, everything was rapidly drifting away.

In a way, it was a relief. Even if I had survived a bit longer, all I would have witnessed was Old Scho kissing Adele-Koyori in some twisted romantic scene, right?

I wanted to say something, anything.

'Seriously, isn’t this just too much?'

At the same time, I felt like I had returned to one of the early turns, back to my childhood as a regressor.

Back then, I didn’t have to face destruction alone. There was always the reassuring back of the most dependable dealer right in front of me.

See? Old Scho’s potential was definitely extraordinary.

If only he could fully unleash that overwhelming talent, if only he could blossom it completely, not in this bad ending but in reality, then, old man, together we could definitely――.

At that moment, my consciousness plummeted to the bottom.

The sensation of death was not much different from a dream or reality.

Blackout.

[Translator - Jjescus]

[Proofreader - Gun]