I'm an Infinite Regressor, But I've Got Stories to Tell-Chapter 339

The Surrenderer I

There have long been certain taboos in genre fiction, rules where we all agree, Let’s all be careful not to do this, okay?

For example, if the protagonist has racked up over 200 chapters of sweet, devoted romance with another character, they can’t suddenly end up with some other random side character.

The protagonist can’t make a blunder that results in a decisive defeat for their allies, nor can the allies blunder in a way that causes the protagonist a decisive loss.

It may come as a surprise to you readers, but a plot in which a ninja appears out of nowhere and massacres all the characters is, in fact, also forbidden.

Among these is, of course, the taboo known as the once-powerful protagonist suddenly loses their power and becomes weak.

And so there is I, the Undertaker, who has entered a self-imposed Aura diet. One might say that I, too, have violated an unwritten rule of the genre-fiction world.

However, the particular taboo dealt with in this episode is of a slightly different nature from the ones mentioned above.

[...]

Today’s protagonist is none other than the bearer of such illustrious titles as “The Weakest of the Four Heavenly Kings,” “One-Trick Laptop,” “Got-Wrecked-By-The-Mastermind Award,” “Out of Every Possible Miko, They Chose Oh Dok-seo (LOL),” and so on.

[......]

The Admin of the Infinite Metagame.

This is an account of their desperate battle to somehow overcome the literary taboo binding them:

A villain who has already been defeated by the protagonist must never return stronger than before.

That account is today’s story.

“Hey, mister! I brought something super amazing!”

Bang!

One day, as usual, Dok-seo made her entrance by kicking the door wide open. Because her brain still hadn’t evolved beyond a simian-level, she maintained the miraculous logic of “hands = front feet ≒ hind feet.”

I spoke softly, channeling the mind of a chimpanzee caretaker. “Dok-seo... I’m begging you, please just knock. You barged in right after I finished showering last time too.”

“Whoops, sorry, sorry. But, like, Saintess unnie is always watching you anyway, right? Even if I see something, it’s basically like a single drop in the Pacific Ocean.”

[Ms. Dok-seo?] the Saintess hastily called out using her Telepathy. [I’ve never done anything like that, you know?]

We were both silent.

[Mr. Undertaker, it’s a misunderstanding and slander. You know very well how much I respect your privacy.]

Moving on.

As you all know, Oh Dok-seo is an otaku suffering from an incurable case of chuunibyou disease. And, tragically, the concept of “super amazing” for a chuunibyou is often a far cry from what most normal people might consider as such.

Suppose there’s a character who, for some tragic reason, lost an eye. An ordinary person would think, How sad... But our beloved author Dok-seo here would get all excited, going, “Wow! A magic Eye! All hail the King of the Mystic Eye!”

Dok-seo chose that moment to pipe in again. “Yeah, we can debate Saintess unnie’s tastes later. For now, just look at my super-amazing creation.”

[Ms. Dok-seo? Dok-seo, can you hear me?]

“Tadaaa!”

Dok-seo unfurled a newspaper with a dramatic flourish. On that newspaper, which hadn’t been updated in years, there were gigantic brushstrokes:

List of Outer Gods List

Type 1: End of All Shape & Form, “Infinite Void”

Type 2: serverSHUTDOWN, “Admin of the Infinite Metagame”

Type 3: Abyss of Dreams, “Nut”

Type 4: Infinite Labyrinth, “Mastermind”

Type 5: Absolute Sike, “Leviathan”

Type 6: Army of Annihilation, “Monster Wave”

Dok-seo proudly flapped the newspaper. freewebnσvel.cøm

“Ta-da! What do you think? I wasn’t sure whether I should list them by threat ranking or just in the order they had contact with you, so I thought I’d keep it simple first! So?!”

A whole galaxy sparkled and spun in Dok-seo’s eyes.

“Pretty amazing, right?”

I fell silent, struggling to work out exactly where and how to launch a rebuttal. Maybe I should start with the core issue: What the hell was up with that weird way of writing Server Shutdown? And she even spelled the word “Psyche” wrong. Did she mean something like Absolute Mind? Something like that.

“Well...”

“Uh huh?!”

“It’s... cool. Very cool.”

“Right?!”

“Yeah, you’ve really got a special flair for these things. You truly are a writer, through and through, and a great one at that.”

“Hah!”

“But, hmm... Actually, we’re not even sure if Monster Wave is truly an Outer God or just a secondary phenomenon connected to an Outer God, right?”

“Right, right, right. Yeah, that part bugged me too, buuut ‘Army of Annihilation’ just sounded sooo frickin’ awesome that I couldn’t leave it out... So I just tossed it in for now. Isn’t it epic?”

So just because it sounded cool, they got to be crowned an Outer God. Whether Monster Wave would be happy or appalled to hear that, I had no idea.

Anyway, there was still more to point out.

“Hey, Dok-seo.”

“Mhm!”

“Why did you force in all these epithets, anyway? They’re not aliases used in the standard strategy guides or anything. Don’t you think it’s unnecessary?”

“Huh? What are you talking about? If that’s the standard we’re going with, then all those fancy Three Kingdoms names, like the Five Tiger Generals or Crouching Dragon and Young Phoenix, should be treated the same way too.”

“Well, those have been around from the start. It’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms. They’ve got that classical authenticity, a rightful claim to their epithets.”

“Oh, really now?” Dok-seo then said with total nonchalance, “Then since I’m writing Undertaker: The Novel, I can just assign epithets however I want, can’t I?”

What.

“I mean, in the actual historical records of the Three Kingdoms, there was no such thing as the Five Tiger Generals, right? Same thing here, yeah? You go play around in the real historical accounts, mister. In my ‘Romance,’ these are the official epithets. Bang-bang-bang.”

This indefinite-hiatus brat...

‘For this arc alone, you’ve posted 96 separate “delayed publication” notices and 37 “resuming publication” notices, and yet you act like you’re on par with the venerable Luo Guanzhong, a man who properly finished his epic!’

Regrettably, I couldn’t muster any immediate counterargument to her half-baked debate on “historical records vs. a romance.” Thus, I changed my angle.

“But isn’t the list kind of inconsistent? Look at your list.”

“Huh? Where?”

“For Type 2, you wrote serverSHUTDOWN, ‘Admin of the Infinite Metagame.’ All the other Outer Gods are written like normal titles, but this one is half-and-half. Don’t you think that’s weird?”

“Oh, that?” Dok-seo casually folded the newspaper. “It doesn’t really matter, does it? After all, that one’s the weakest—no—the absolute weakest Outer God.”

Bzzt.

Just then, the laptop on my desk—the last “main body” that the Admin of the Infinite Metagame had left in this world—began trembling frantically.

But Dok-seo neither saw nor heard it.

“Admin of the Infinite Metagame might sound impressive, but the poor thing got beaten by you, got beaten by the Mastermind, and also got beaten by Infinite Void. Aside from handing me the draft for the novel before you even regress, what does it have left? Leviathan devours the Aura of every Awakener, but this thing? Meh. Honestly... By now, in terms of Anomaly threat level, it’s not even Outer God-class. It’s, like, village-class?”

Bzzzzzzz! Vrrrrrr!

The laptop that had quietly stayed powered off now booted up on its own, flashing a blue screen in pulses.

But Dok-seo ignored it.

Why? Because that laptop was for writing her serialization, and right now... she wasn’t writing anything.

She was on hiatus.

Today, yesterday, the day before that, the day before that one—throughout past, present, and even future eternities—she remained steadfastly on hiatus.

I couldn’t stand by and watch it silently any longer.

“Well... Still, Dok-seo.”

“Mhm?”

“The Admin of the Infinite Metagame is the Outer God that chose you to be its Miko, you know. When everyone else just saw you as a brat, it alone discovered some remarkable potential in you. In other words, it ‘scouted’ you. Couldn’t you see it that way?”

“Hmm.”

“That Absolute Defense you rely on—”

“AT-Field.”

“...Yes, your AT-Field is also proof that you remain its Miko. You can dismiss any interference in this world as mere ‘NPC struggles inside a creative work.’ That’s quite a power.”

“I mean, I guess so, but...” She furrowed her brow and tilted her head. “I became an author—something I was never meant to be—and ended up writing your life story all because it chose me as its Miko, right?”

“Uh, yes, that’s true.”

“But mister.”

Suddenly, Oh Dok-seo’s expression turned serious.

“I find writing... painful.”

I went silent again.

“Every time I face that blank laptop screen, my mind goes blank too. I’m scared of how the readers will react. I’m afraid of tomorrow’s sunrise. Ahh, I am a girl trapped in the hell of everyday life! Who is it that relegated me to a fate of being incapable of finding joy in the sunlight as sunlight? Right. The Admin of the Infinite Metagame. It is the culprit. It is the one that robbed me of life’s happiness...”

“So I don’t particularly feel any gratitude toward it. If it’s so upset, it could at least bestow upon me a body that pumps out nonstop dopamine so that I love writing every single day. I really don’t want to be on hiatus, but because of that thing, my poor readers are the ones who end up suffering.”

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

The laptop trembled so violently it fell from the desk. Even on the floor, it kept shaking in anger.

Dok-seo blinked in apparent realization, then said, “Oh, right! I should ask Seo Gyu to replace all the Outer God epithets on SG Net with my versions! Heehee! This is gonna be fun! Now I’m an official Historian of the Library Society!”

Then, just as quickly as she had kicked the entrance open, she went scampering out the door like a hamster excited to see its master.

Silence fell over my private room.

After a while, the still-quivering laptop gave a small click, and its blue screen disappeared. In its place appeared a Vtuber avatar—a small girl with white hair, in 144p resolution—who began to speak in a badly compressed, low-quality voice.

[This is so—CENSORED—unbelievable—]

[I gather up everything I can muster—give it my all—like a final grudge orb—]

[Yet a so-called Miko ends up beating up her own god. Where in this—CENSORED—world is there a Pope that thrashes her believers—CENSORED—?]

[We need more devotion, more faith than ever, but all she does is trash talk her own god—CENSORED—CENSORED—]

[And then there’s the matter of me ghostwriting the so-called scripture. She just made me do that out of nowhere—]

[And she got caught, so—CENSORED—she just stopped writing the scripture for seven whole years now—]

[Whatever you think, I’m not behind this. I’d gain at least a little of my power back if she would just finish that scripture—why on earth would I sabotage its completion—?]

[She’s the—CENSORED—one who stopped writing all on her own volition. I had no hand in it and—]

[Seriously—CENSORED—just think about it for one second. If she finished that story, at least some portion of my strength might recover. Why would I prevent it?]

There was the crackle of static, the laptop overloaded, and the monitor went black.

There was no helping it. In its present state, the Admin of the Infinite Metagame was so weak that even such a small manifestation in the real world nearly used up all its power.

“Well... my condolences.”

[...]

“But, you know, it really makes me wonder.”

[...]

“It was you who chose Oh Dok-seo as your Miko in the first place, wasn’t it?”

[...]

“Your Miko, your responsibility. Tough it out, oh ‘Server Shutdown’ of the Outer Gods—The Admin of the Infinite Metagame.”

[...]

[CENSORED.]

[CENSORED.]

[CENSORED.]

[CENSORED.]

[CENSORED.]

Like a certain ancient genre novelist who filled over two pages with just the phrase “Level up!”,[1] the Admin of the Infinite Metagame spewed out a stream of 144p-quality profanity for quite some time.

I still wonder sometimes.

If only, at that moment, I had consoled it just a little more kindly instead of mocking that Anomaly—

Maybe, just maybe, the Admin of the Infinite Metagame wouldn’t have gone on to fully embrace the dark side...

“Mister! Emergency, emergency!”

Bang!

One day in the next cycle, sometime around the 925th, Dok-seo once again came kicking in the door with her hind leg and barged in.

I screamed.

“Gyaaaaah!”

Because I’d just finished showering.

Dok-seo also screamed.

“Kyaaaaaa!”

“Huaaaack!”

“Kyaaaaaaaaaa!”

“Raaaaagh! Get out! How long are you going to just stand there screaming, you brat?!”

“Oh, right. Mister, your abs are insane. I mean, just out of a, you know, like from a physics-curiosity kind of thing? Could I—?”

“Before you get to experience the crushing weight of physics, get out.”

A moment later...

“Oh, right! Mister! Emergency! Emergency!”

Bang!

Dok-seo once again slammed the door and came in. Thankfully, this time I’d only just gotten my hair damp, I was fully dressed in my barista uniform.

Drained, I muttered, “Alright. What is it now?”

“A transparent dragon has appeared!”

“Sorry, a what?”

“They say a transparent dragon just showed up in Daegu! It’s going all Grrrroooowl! and roaring, and it’s super, super powerful! It might be Outer-God class!”

Yes.

The Admin of the Infinite Metagame.

Literally, the Anomaly that governs every creative work in existence.

It got pissed off.

Footnotes:

[1] This is possibly a reference to Nam Heesung, the author of The Legendary Moonlight Sculptor.