I'm an Infinite Regressor, But I've Got Stories to Tell-Chapter 441

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Hình dạng

3.

Some ignorant people mocked the Saintess, saying she was weak.

So much for acting all high and mighty! To surrender after just a week.

Ah—. Was the Saintess’s mentality only that strong?

Anyway, the voluntary withdrawal of a powerful competitor was welcome news.

They proudly shouted, “I’m different,” and reached out their hands to the I-O-Shim trio, saying, “Let’s try living together this time.”

And then—

“Kyaaaaaaak!”

The hands that met in a handshake all burned away completely — a rare experience that everyone, without exception, got to taste equally.

“Get out! Get out! Get out of my house!”

“I-I can’t understand you…… Shim Ah Ryeon. I’m sorry. But why, seriously, why won’t you wash yourself?”

“So. This is what killing intent feels like.”

Surrender. Surrender. And surrender again.

Later, it was revealed that in fact, the week the Saintess endured was not a “mere” week but rather a “whole” week — a feat that deserved emphasis.

Among all who challenged after the Saintess, no one lasted a full week. Dang Seo Rin lasted twenty-five hours, and Cheon Hwa didn’t even last three.

[Hoo.]

Then, at last, a smile — no, a smirk — appeared on Lee Ha-yul’s face. Perhaps that was what it would look like if the concept of “victory” were expressed with lips.

I asked him why he was smiling.

[Because I knew this would happen.]

The poisonous density in Lee Ha-yul’s smirk grew even thicker.

[In the end, no one will take us in.]

“Oh, sure. What a boast. So?”

[Now, we’re unavoidably, inevitably, by sheer external pressure — forced to live with the Undertaker.]

“……?!”

[I could not have reached this state by myself. But if I use ‘Shim’, I believed it would surely be possible, and my belief has now been proven true.]

“……”

[All the hate and resentment are focused solely on ‘Shim’, while I alone, among the trio, have earned the reputation of being the ‘most normal and cutest’.]

Click. Lee Ha-yul pushed his wheelchair forward.

[This is the very definition of “slaying with another’s knife.”]

For reference, the historical figure he liked most from Romance of the Three Kingdoms was Jia Xu.

[Whether the Undertaker ends up with no one or with anyone at all, I don’t care.]

[Even if he doesn’t end up with anyone, I’ll still live with him without issue. And if he does, I’ll be the one that partner loves the most.]

[Sayonara.]

“……”

And then that Lee Ha-yul — really did go straight into the Undertaker’s house and start living with him!

“Crazy, crazy, crazy. Totally insane……”

Even now, just remembering his back as it confidently receded into the distance sent chills down my spine.

Yes.

The beloved daughter of Jung Sang-guk, mayor of Busan and a rising presidential candidate — even if she denied it, she had undoubtedly inherited her father’s criminal political instincts.

“Dok Seo?”

“Ah, yeah.”

While I was zoning out, lost in the recall room, the Undertaker spoke to me.

“Are you alright? You said you had something to confess, and now you suddenly go silent again — it puts me in a tough spot.”

“Ah, yeah. Sorry. It’s nothing big, actually.”

I put down my coffee cup.

“You know how, back then — not now, but in one of the earlier runs — I took the right to write [Side Stories] without needing your permission?”

“Hmm.”

The Undertaker, grinding coffee beans, nodded slightly. But an indescribable hint of vagueness passed across his face.

“Yes. I think something like that did happen. Though I can’t recall it clearly.”

“……”

Prick.

A sting near my heart.

A year ago, ever since he had been infected by Udumbara along with our comrades at the abandoned school and lost all his powers, the Undertaker had sometimes… become like this.

He hadn’t lost his memory. It had just faded.

The timelines of conversations he’d had with others had begun to blur together, and while he still remembered the important parts, he could no longer recall every word precisely.

Just like any human being.

He had become human.

“Yeah. Back then, we agreed that I could publish a side-story type episode every hundred chapters.”

Quickly, I tried to change the subject, pretending nothing was wrong.

The Undertaker was perceptive. If I’d shown even a hint of sadness, he would’ve sensed it instantly.

“I still have one of those rights left……. So, uh. Do you mind if I use a bit of a sneaky method?”

“Sneaky? What do you mean?”

“The manuscript’s almost completely done now. So for all the upcoming side stories — just lump them together and count them as one!”

“That’s a bit……”

The Undertaker looked troubled, but I wasn’t the least bit intimidated.

This, I could never compromise on!

“Pleeease? Undertakeeer? Hmm? They’re all about the same theme anyway! They only look separate on the surface — you could say they’re one big episode.”

“Enough with the cute act.”

“Yes, sir.”

Damn it. He always accepted Ha-yul and Shim Ah Ryeon’s cutesy behavior, but when it’s me, suddenly it’s strict discipline? That’s family bias.

“Well, you have worked unbelievably hard this past year. I never imagined you’d really manage to keep up writing five episodes a week……”

“See? I told you. It was the curse of Ten Thousand Amusements. Once that guy vanished, look how properly I took up the writer’s calling!”

“……This is actually the normal way things should be. Anyway, what kind of side story are you insisting on combining into one?”

“Mm! The Undertaker’s romance story!”

“……”

“To put it bluntly, individual routes. Which heroine the Undertaker ended up with, and how — I, the literary maiden, will describe in elegant, truthful prose— Aaaah! Don’t go! Undertaker, don’t go! Please listen!”

Drag, drag, drag—

Suddenly, I turned into a robot vacuum being dragged across the floor, clutching the barista apron of the fleeing Undertaker.

I jumped up.

“Wait! Hey, Go Yuri!”

“Oh my.”

At my lion’s roar, the Undertaker shut his eyes tight as if in horror. Still, I didn’t stop.

“How is this my fault, huh?! Why am I the one in the wrong?! It’s all because you won’t date anyone! Are you planning to stay single forever?! Is this the Lee Ha-yul ending?! The Lee Ha-yul–Oh Dok Seo–Shim Ah Ryeon trio ending?! Not even a friend ending, but a family ending?! In all dating sim history, this is unprecedented! What even is this?!”

“I’m perfectly satisfied as I am.”

“That’s the problem!! You go around saying you love people — saying you love this person and that person — over and over!”

“No, love doesn’t necessarily mean romantic love, Dok Seo. I love you too—”

“Screw youuuu!!”

Crash! The chair flipped.

My head and body suddenly felt hot; there was no stopping the eruption of rage.

“When I agreed to erase your various powers…… especially your perfect memory — I only did it because I calculated that once your dead comrades’ bodies vanished from sight, your ‘impotent-protagonist cliché’ would finally be broken!”

“Hmm.”

“But that sly Lee Ha-yul…! Thinking back, he was always clever. He foresaw that you’d be troubled and made his move first. Ah! To think I once considered him a close friend! Damn, I’ve been betrayed by a kid! This is betrayal of friendship! Betrayal!!”

Phew.

After pouring out the fire in my chest, I finally calmed down.

Still, some unknown residue of emotion seemed to linger faintly at the bottom of my lungs — but maybe that was just my imagination.

Strange, though. Lately, every time I was with the Undertaker, it felt like this.

Before, even the most trivial chat with him felt as if a purifier was running in my lungs — crisp, dust-free, refreshing air.

“I have the right to demand my fair share as your ghostwriter! So let me do it! The romance-tragedy side story!”

“So it’s even a tragedy now……”

The Undertaker looked even more distressed.

“But Dok Seo, you can’t just make up something that never happened.”

“Yeah, I know.”

I smiled brightly.

“Don’t worry. The side stories that are truly nonexistent amount to maybe two…… no, maybe just one.”

“What?”

“The rest are all based on true stories.”

The Undertaker furrowed his brow.

“Based on true stories? I can’t make sense of that. You know very well I’ve never had any so-called ‘romantic routes.’”

“Really?”

“……”

“Are you sure?”

His eyes wavered. Maybe he sensed something ominous in my tone.

Seeing that look somehow made the frustration in my chest feel lighter, even delightful.

“Undertaker, you might not remember, but in the 146th regression, this happened. When you single-handedly cleared the Inunaki Tunnel.”

Back then, the tunnel greeted him with graffiti on its wall:

Welcome back. It’s your seventh time already, huh?

A strange greeting.

Because the Undertaker had faced the Inunaki Tunnel exactly six times.

So where did that extra “seventh” encounter come from — the one he couldn’t remember?

“That was……”

He groped through the fog in his head.

“Utopia. Right — the run where Dang Seo Rin fell to Hecate. I don’t remember that cycle, so one must’ve been added.”

“Hahahaha.”

I burst into laughter without realizing it.

“That was the 173rd run, Undertaker! You cleared Inunaki Tunnel in the 146th. The timelines don’t match up at all.”

“……”

“Mm. But in a sense, you were spot-on. Yes! Hecate’s Utopia operates on the same principle.”

I could feel my lips curling up in an unstoppable smile.

Whatever. The Undertaker liked when I smiled, after all. There was nothing to feel guilty about.

“There’s more. There are runs you don’t remember.”

“……”

“Don’t you see it yet? Go Yuri fixed Emmitt Schopenhauer’s coordinates so that he’d always commit suicide right at the starting point. Why?”

The Undertaker.

Even if Go Yuri, the protagonist, pressed the “Give Up” button, he was nothing more than a fake regressor.

The true regressor, Emmitt Schopenhauer, was already dead. In other words, this world’s regression was fixed.

“So even if you were infected by Udumbara and lost your memories, even if you gave everything up — you could still start again anytime!”

“……”

“Even if you dropped out, it didn’t matter. The ‘Undertaker who gave up’ gets erased from the data. As a result, only the memories of the ‘Undertaker who didn’t give up’ remain and persist!”

When I realized this, I was truly amazed.

Go Yuri hadn’t just blindly entrusted the future to the Undertaker. She hadn’t left it to mere faith or hope.

She took measures. She installed safeguards. She designed it.

Even the branches where he failed — even the routes where he chose to end his life — she calculated all of it perfectly so that the world would “restart even if he gave up.”

How kind.

How noble a sense of responsibility.

And how cruel.

“Wait. Hold on. If I was infected by Udumbara, wouldn’t I have lost all my perfect memory too? Then how could I restart while selectively retaining only that run’s memory…….”

“You just repeated everything from the first to the 146th run again, that’s all.”

“……”

“You already suspected it, didn’t you? That maybe the run you think of as your 100th wasn’t truly your hundredth in the real sense.”

Repeat. Again, again, endlessly.

Until when?

Until the Undertaker chose not to pick [Get infected by Udumbara and give up his powers] — until he stopped giving up and moved on willingly to the next run.

“Then……”

“Yeah. That ‘missing run’ the Inunaki Tunnel mentioned — it meant that at that point, the runs were duplicated entirely.”

“……”

“From its perspective, the [Undertaker who gave up] and the [Undertaker who didn’t] were different entities. But aside from that, everything else was identical, so it calculated, oh, there was one extra run.”

“……”

“You get it now, Undertaker? That was only the 146th run. Just the 146th! Yet even then, you’d already been infected by Udumbara once and repeated everything from the first to the 146th!”

A pained look crossed his face.

My chest tingled. A faint ache — but accompanied by overwhelming certainty.

Because even now, I knew the Undertaker would never think badly of me or reject me.

The part of me that anyone else might call ugly — but before him, I didn’t have to hide or pretend.

Just as he always said, he loved me.

“So, Undertaker.”

“……”

“You gave up once at the 146th. But we’ve rolled through almost the 3,000th by now.”

I couldn’t hold it back and spoke.

We’d cleared countless obstacles. Now everything was in the past — relics even the Undertaker couldn’t remember.

Now it was safe to say.

So I said it.

“Just how many times did you give up?”

“……”

Noh Doha, the head of road management — or no, there’s no such department anymore. So just Noh Doha unni? Noh Doha?

I completely understood why she tormented the Undertaker.

When he accepts your entire existence so completely, anyone would want to leave scratch marks.

“You see? I’m not inventing fake stories. Quite the opposite. I’m restoring the stories that were lost.”

“You……”

“I’ve already collected the happy ending. So naturally, as a true gamer, I must aim for 100% completion.”

“You’re not…… addicted to Ten Thousand Amusements, are you—”

“He doesn’t exist anymore. What are you talking about, Undertaker?”

Grip.

I held his hand tightly. Rough, strong — but strength that would never turn against me.

He flinched, tried to pull away, but I didn’t let go.

“He’s just a name now. Gone. No substance. This laptop is mine.”

“Ah……”

Thud.

The Undertaker stumbled and collapsed onto the counter. He had lost consciousness.

“Up we go.”

Thump. I gently supported his body to make sure he didn’t get hurt as I laid him down slowly.

From my pocket, I pulled out an empty vial and set it next to his coffee cup.

“You shouldn’t let your guard down, Undertaker.”

“……”

“Ahaha. Even if all the Awakeners disappeared, the items created before Udumbara infection still exist.”

For example — Uehara Shino.

Until now, I’d hidden this as thoroughly as possible so the Undertaker wouldn’t suspect anything after reading my novel — my secret MacGuffin.

She was a pharmacist. An alchemist.

In terms of healing ability, she was inferior to the awakened Shim Ah Ryeon — but when it came to crafting items utterly unrelated to saving the world, she was overwhelmingly superior.

“Seriously, Undertaker, you’re too kind for your own good! Even if she’s only a C-rank healer, she’s an S-rank chemist — why not make use of that?!”

Of course.

I, Oh Dok Seo, had anticipated the possibility that the Undertaker might give up his powers, and before the White Night of June 17 arrived, I had stockpiled a lot of “various” drugs.

Now they were items unobtainable anywhere.

A C-rank agent reverting into an S-rank — that’s what patience gets you.

“Good. Mm, the effect’s perfect. I’m glad I mixed it into the milk last night, knowing you drink café au lait every morning!”

So far, this story had always been told from the perspective of the Undertaker — perhaps the kindest man in this world.

But in order to reach a happy ending, one must pass through countless bad endings. That’s the truth of life.

The Undertaker probably saw failed runs as bad endings…… but for me?

Those “give up” runs I mentioned earlier — when he was infected by Udumbara and ended up repeating everything from the first to the Xth — those dead ends were the real bad endings.

The main story was over.

An indisputable happy ending — the Undertaker, his friends, the laws of physics, and everyday life had all been restored.

But readers well-versed in visual novels know — there is not only a happy ending but also a True Ending.

And the True Ending can only be unlocked after clearing all happy and bad endings.

Like the final dessert served to the gourmet who enjoyed every omakase course.

“Don’t worry, Undertaker. The finish line that you, Go Yuri, and I finally reached — it won’t be ruined.”

“……”

Stroke.

I brushed aside the hair of the unconscious Undertaker, lying over the counter.

Even now, the faint seven-colored scent he wore every day lingered in the air.

“I already said it, but — it’s safe now. It’s all in the past. Oh wait, did I only think that silently before? Anyway.”

Click.

Next to his head, I set up the laptop and opened the screen.

As always, a blank white page greeted me.

I stretched my arms wide.

“Uuuugh! Haaaah…… Alright, let’s finish this before the Undertaker wakes up.”