I’m an Infinite Regressor, But I’ve Got Stories to Tell

Discord: https://dsc.gg/reapercomics

◈ I’m an Infinite Regressor, But I’ve Got Stories to Tell

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The Skeptic VIII

“Your Excellency the Undertaker.”

“Mm.”

“The intake process is complete.”

It was raining.

Early June.

Total evacuees: 5.5 million.

“Let’s hold a celebration tonight to give the administrative team a break after all their hard work.”

“Okay. Around midnight, I’ll mix sleeping aids into the food and drinks so that the administrative team can get some rest as well.”

“Great. Make sure to coordinate everything thoroughly with the fairies. Hang in there just until tonight.”

“As you command.”

Ji-won saluted and left while I stood at the entrance of the tunnel, looking up at the sky.

It had begun raining back in April and still hadn’t stopped—more than fifty straight days of heavy rainfall. Low-lying coastal areas had sunk long ago. Even neighborhoods on hills, if they lacked a decent drainage system, were now underwater.

Everywhere I looked—rain, rain, and more rain. Fog clung stubbornly over huge pools of stagnant water, and muddy cascades crept over the land without rest.

Gone was any sign of that once proud cityscape that Busan citizens had boasted was “the world’s best place at present.”

‘And to think this isn’t even the real monsoon, just a precursor...’

I couldn’t begin to imagine what kind of catastrophe might be unfolding in faraway cities like Venice.

For all we knew, the 5.5 million people in the tunnel might be the last surviving humans on Earth.

“Nyaaa. Don’t make such a gloomy face, meow.”

Before I noticed, a cat-eared magical girl had padded over and tapped my waist.

“Manyo Neko.”

“Show a little more confidence, nya. Thanks to you, Undateikeo, we still managed to save quite a lot of people, didn’t we?” A laugh tinkered out of her in a gentle purr. “If you put more weight on the lives you couldn’t save than on those you did, even the strongest Awakeners can break down after just a few days, nya!”

It was a saying often spoken in these apocalyptic times, but hearing it come from Manyo Neko somehow carried special weight. She was, after all, the one in the 145th cycle who managed to clear the Inunaki Tunnel without being tempted by the ghost of her childhood friend, pushing forward to the end.

“Thanks. That’s a helpful reminder.” I reached out and gently stroked her head and the back of her neck.

“Nyaanyaang...”

Manyo Neko purred with pleasure.

Because she was a Miko possessed by the Cat God, she especially liked this kind of affectionate touch. Of course, she still had a perfectly human sense of reason, so she never allowed anyone but a close friend to pet her so intimately.

Or was it the other way around? Because she was still a rational human, she enjoyed such touches, but only granted them to those whom she was close with, precisely because she was possessed by the Cat God?

Despite living through hundreds of cycles, the mysteries of human-cat behavior only deepen.

Manyo Neko gave a little shiver. “Seriously, Undateikeo! You’re like the most terrifying butler on Earth, nya! No matter how ill-tempered a cat might be, it’s impossible to resist your hands, meow...”

“At this rate, Obsidian Qin might catch me in the act. You magical girls in administration won’t see them for a while after tonight, will you? At least give them a proper goodbye.”

“Nyaang! Good night to you too, Undateikeo!”

Manyo Neko hopped away, splashing the rainwater under her boots with each step.

That night, we had a drinking party into the late hours in a café within the Inunaki Tunnel. When midnight struck, all Awakeners except the combat team would enter a long-term sleep like ordinary civilians.

“Long live the Magical Girl Association!”

“Cheers!”

“Beijing Liberation Assault Force, bottoms up!”

“Bottoms up!”

For now, everyone gathered around in lively camaraderie.

Awakeners of various nationalities mingled freely, some of them not even sharing a common language except what the alcohol made up for, clinking their glasses nonetheless. It went beyond Koreans to Japanese and Chinese, and even further still to Mongolians, Russians, Filipinos, Vietnamese, Indians, Nepalese, and more—all of them people who knew me personally and had faithfully heeded my warning that “if you don’t evacuate now, you’ll all be wiped out.”

Ours wasn’t an ordinary bond. Many of them had been part of the 23rd cycle’s final charge against Meteor Shower, then believed to be humanity’s final boss. They had cast aside the divisions of nationality and race in favor of forging a ladder for humanity’s survival.

In that sense, at nearly every brink of apocalypse, we would see many of the same faces. We weren’t joined by where we were born but rather by the place where we’d face death.

Across from me, I faced Do-hwa as she swirled a wine glass.

“I suppose it’s all thanks to you, the guy who handles multiple languages like a native speaker, that you became our focal point... I’ve long wondered why you insisted on calling the National Road Management Corps headquarters the Tower of Babel...”

“Mm.”

“The Tower of Babel is a symbol of human arrogance and failure, reduced to dust by the wrath of God. You’re always harping on how names are crucial, but then you went and attached that label to the Corps’s most important building...”

She rested her chin on her palm at an angle.

“Only now is my question answered. You wanted to invoke the ‘spell’ that in the Tower of Babel, all of humanity could communicate without a language barrier...” When I didn’t respond, she huffed. “All these people from different countries, cooperating without conflict... Others might call it the romantic notion of unity in the face of crisis, but I see it differently.”

How many runs of painstaking effort did it take to gather only those cooperative souls who’d band together this way?

Do-hwa didn’t speak the quiet part aloud, but the look in her deep eyes echoed the truth never put to the spoken word.

I pulled a key from my jacket, making sure she saw.

“Huh? What’s that...?”

“It controls the doors into the Inunaki Tunnel,” I explained. “I molded some bird feathers with wax and let them harden into shape.”

“Oh, Daedalus...?”

“Yes. The Inunaki Tunnel’s rapid growth has caused it to evolve into a Labyrinthos, a ‘Grand Labyrinth.’ Now, without this key, opening the great gate of the Inunaki Tunnel is nearly impossible.”[1]

I took Do-hwa’s hand in mine. She flinched, her brow twitching at our closeness. Still, I kept eye contact and slowly, respectfully, placed the Key of Daedalus in her palm.

“Tonight, once every administrator Awakener has gone to sleep, seal the tunnel entrance from the inside with the guards we assigned. Then, no matter what, even if the Saintess uses Telepathy to plead otherwise, don’t open the door for anyone.”

A literal lockdown.

Leviathan could very well be on the cusp of Outer God-class ascension. Waging war against such a monster with an untrained mob in tow would only lead to annihilation.

3,721. That was the number of Awakeners, carefully—more than carefully—handpicked to form our strike force. We had burned our bridges behind us. We never intended to retreat into the Inunaki Tunnel for rescue in the first place.

“The moment you crack that door open, Leviathan’s rainwater will seep in. And that water is anything but ordinary.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it a million times. One drop on human skin, and you turn into... some kind of water bug or something? A lethal poison, basically.”

“Exactly. Noh Do-hwa, as humanity’s final gatekeeper, you must protect the tunnel’s entrance.”

She froze as her gloved fingers brushed lightly across my hand.

“Hmph...” she scoffed eventually, fingers still resting across the webbing of my index and middle fingers. “Well. I can wait ten years... If a decade passes with no word of success, I’ll have the fairies kill all 5.5 million inside who are asleep. After all, it might be interesting to become the cause of the world’s end myself...”

Indeed. That was an ending I had to prevent at all costs.

https://dsc.gg/reapercomics

After midnight, the raucous drinking party began to settle. The administration-type Awakeners who had taken Uehara Shino’s special sleeping pills started collapsing one by one.

“All right, let’s clean up!”

“Aw man, we’re already risking our necks out there, now we gotta do the cleanup for these people too?”

“Cleanup’s gotta be done by whoever’s sober, you moron. If you hate it, then you should’ve drunk yourself silly.”

“Ugh, so unfair...”

“Unnie, sleep well. We’ll be back soon.”

“Heuk! Humans, please follow our guidance and transport the sleepers in an orderly manner!”

With cooperation between Awakeners and fairies, the party was tidied up in no time. Then those who would be heading into battle said their final farewells to their colleagues.

No one told them to, but all 3,721 of our combat troops began to gather in the casino lobby, one hundred meters underground in the Inunaki Tunnel. Those who’d had no interest in the party and went off to tinker with slot machines and who’d simply dozed off out of boredom also gathered in the lobby.

3,721 capacity. Zero absent.

I looked around at them.

“Anyone who wants to turn back, this is your last chance.”

The instant I raised my hand, my voice resounded throughout the room to the Awakeners assembled from every corner of the world, in a medley of different languages:

– Anyone who wants to turn back, this is your last chance.

They flinched.

“Huh?”

“What?”

Some Magical Girls shot me looks, confused why I would be speaking in Japanese. Meanwhile, the Beijing Liberation Assault Force members were baffled at the Chinese echo of my words.

I ignored their puzzlement and kept speaking, moving my lips and fingers in tandem.

“Over the past two months, as you evacuated humanity into this shelter, you saw the ugliest sides of human nature.”

– Over the past two months, as you evacuated humanity into this shelter, you saw the ugliest sides of human nature.

“And now, we set out from this safe haven to fight an unprecedented Anomaly for the sake of those same humans.”

– And now, we set out from this safe haven to fight an unprecedented Anomaly for the sake of those same humans.

A curious phenomenon was unfolding. I was definitely speaking Korean aloud, but a murky black Aura spread through the entire lobby like cobwebs, instantly translating the words for all 3,721 present.

[Ah.]

The first person to understand was Phantom Blade from the Magical Girl Association.

[This is... a form of telepathic magic.]

“Huh? What does that mean, nya?”

[Undateikeo-san is using the sound waves of his spoken words, vibrating them in real time with Aura, and delivering them to each of us individually.]

Phantom Blade had always used telepathic magic to communicate, given an extreme language impairment, so she recognized the technique faster than anyone else.

[Feel the flow of Aura. Can you sense how the pulses differ ever so slightly depending on each listener’s nationality?]

“Uh...” Manyo Neko twitched her ears. “I-I think so, kind of... Wait, are you saying Undateikeo is, all on his own, using Aura vibrations to... to translate everything for each of the four thousand people here, nya?”

[Precisely so,] Phantom Blade marveled. [What’s more, he’s controlling the wave so it doesn’t bleed over to adjacent listeners. That means right now all our hearing is effectively under Undateikeo-san’s control.]

“Is that even possible, nya?”

[You tell me. The flawless Tokyo dialect you’re hearing right now is proof enough, isn’t it?]

For the record, Phantom Blade was from Kyoto.

In any case, she wasn’t the only observer of this particular phenomenon. A few seconds later, the other Awakeners also began to realize the extent of this display and were astounded.

“What on earth...?”

“You can do that with Aura?”

“I knew he was impressive, but...”

Once again, these weren’t random onlookers but meticulously selected fighters. They knew just how absurd a feat this kind of Automatic Translation via Aura really was. They noticed no matter how much they murmured or muttered, my voice remained “unchanged” and “clear,” cutting through everyone’s clamor.

How? There was only one answer: I was accounting for their chatter in real time and adjusting the sound waves to remain perfectly audible.

“There is no obligation whatsoever to save humanity.”

– There is no obligation whatsoever to save humanity.

Awe comes before heed. When someone truly listens to another’s words, often it’s not just because they empathize with the content, but because that person is exceptionally capable.

It might sound cynical, but at that moment, that power was precisely what the Awakeners before me needed most.

The existence of an absolute powerhouse on their side.

The confidence that our fight wouldn’t end in a pointless slaughter.

“We each of us have witnessed humans slaughtering each other too many times for us to appeal to ‘the bonds of humankind.’”

– We each of us have witnessed humans slaughtering each other too many times for us to appeal to ‘the bonds of humankind.’

Before I knew it, without any formal warning or caution, the entire crowd fell silent.

Gazing back at these Awakeners from all nations, I went on.

“There are a million reasons why humanity might deserve destruction... and so we alone are left.”

Dang Seo-rin watched me with a steady faith in her eyes.

Cheon Yo-hwa gazed at me as though in worship.

Sim Ah-ryeon gave a bright, naive smile as if my feat were natural.

Lee Ha-yul and the Saintess remained poker-faced.

Oh Dok-seo was typing furiously into her phone.

Go Yuri—

Go Yuri still wore that inscrutable smile, quietly staring at my face.

“We don’t care about the contempt other humans may hold. The curses of Anomalies don’t matter to us. If humanity’s survival rests in our hands, our blood, then we will fight Anomalies without hesitation—because I, because we, are the owners of this world!”

“That’s right!”

A voice boomed out.

It belonged to the leader of the 17th Company of the Beijing Liberation Assault Force, the stationmaster of Ciqu Station, an Awakener known as Kwon Ryong. When he unleashed his Lion’s Roar, it echoed not just in Chinese but in every language.

That was the spark.

“We’re in charge here!”

“Mr. Undertaker’s right! Smash every last one of those monstrous bastards!”

“Wu! Wu! Wu! Wu!”

“Kill them! Kill them all!”

Even as their shouts of passion mingled in a chaotic roar, my own voice remained crystal-clear, and their collective cheers fused into a single universal language.

“We are humanity’s last resistance, we are humanity’s final united force! Come, comrades! Shed your blood, brothers! With our blood, we shall restore the world to these five million souls!”

“Uwoooohhh!”

The massive gate of the Inunaki Tunnel swung open, and the downpour that had been pounding the door now flooded in with thunderous noise to reveal a horizon blurred by rain.

From beyond it, the Sea Dragon, aware of our presence, let out a roar that shook the skies.

– G҉ o҉ o҉ o҉ oo҉ o҉ o҉ oo҉...

But even that sound couldn’t drown out our war cry.

I stepped forward. Behind me followed the footsteps of 3,721.

The Human Allied Forces were now departing for battle.

Footnotes:

[1] Daedalus is the craftsman who created the Labyrinth (in Greek, Labúrinthos) on the island of Crete. According to myth, he crafted it so cunningly that he struggled to escape it with his son, Icarus, and ultimately devised a plan to make wings of beeswax and bird feathers to fly out of the maze.