Chapter 141
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The Fortunate One III
Shin Noa
4
The luck hadn't run out.
Even while Reverse-Great Wall was playing an infinite defense game against the material offensive pouring from the continent, 'fortuitous encounters' kept arriving one after another.
[Mr. Undertaker. The 'pink individual' you warned about last time has been confirmed to have moved to Kyushu, Japan.]
The regressor's greatest enemy, the master of gaslighting, Goyori, voluntarily undertook an escape from Joseon on her own.
Unprecedented good news. From my position, I felt like giving her a generous immigration settlement fee.
But that wasn't all.
[The Status Window anomaly didn't appear.]
"Huh?"
[I concentrated and observed the date and location Mr. Undertaker told us about, but no one could see the status window.]
"……."
[Perhaps this too is the influence of the 'Monkey's Paw'?]
But that wasn't all².
Luck wasn't unfolding only in real-world spaces. Even in online communities, my luck knew no bounds.
In short, a Romance of the Three Kingdoms parody craze had started blowing through SG Net's novel serialization board.
-Lu Bu Hides His Father (★9.9)
-General of the Ten Eunuchs (★8.7)
-[Alternate History] Ordered to Northern Expedition and Advanced, But When I Opened My Eyes, It Wasn't North Korea But Hanzhong?! (★9.2)
-The Three Brothers Always Shared the Same Blanket [19+ Complete Edition] (★9.8)
-On the First Day of Possession, I Became Zhang Kai Who Killed Cao Cao's Father (★9.9)
-I Possessed a Yellow Turban Rebel But Das Kapital Is In My Hand (★9.6)
No matter where you looked on the board, Romance of the Three Kingdoms parodies dominated the rankings.
Nowadays, Romance of the Three Kingdoms was completely YOUNG and MZ content.
Not just the novel serialization board, but even in the free board which could be called SG Net's main body, Three Kingdoms bait circulated without any cooldown.
-Anonymous: Three Kingdoms<<< thought it was content for old farts but after eating the novel, the romance, and the official history, there's nothing else like it
-Anonymous: How great an achievement was Ma Su's mountain climbing? With the purpose of experiencing it firsthand, I'm organizing a China travel mountain climbing team. We'll depart when everyone's guild vacation aligns. Sorry, but since overseas is dangerous, we're only accepting depth 600m+ and above. Those interested, please inquire!
-dolLHOuse: Why is SG Net like this lately? Did everyone get bifocals together?
└Anonymous: There's actually a full-noob bastard who still hasn't read Three Kingdoms lolol
└dolLHOuse: I did read it?
└Anonymous: So which faction do you support?
└dolLHOuse: Anyone's fine as long as it's not that big-eared bastard. Aren't all the kids who appear there just ordinary people who end with the Sixteen Kingdoms ending anyway?
└Anonymous: Blocked.
-[Samcheon]WitchJudge: The night sky is particularly pretty today. Was this how the Prime Minister felt looking up at the stars from Wuzhang Plains?
-GoryeoJang: Wow I seriously want to bury all the retards here in coffins lately;;
-[NationalWay]Historian: We're holding a weekly meeting in Busan to read and discuss the official Records of the Three Kingdoms from the original text. (4/6)
Before I knew it, I had been immersed in community browsing for 6 hours straight without taking my eyes off my smartphone.
"Haaah."
I shuddered.
I had nagged Alyeon every day to quit that damn internet addict lifestyle.
Yet I, for the first time in 590 loops, had come to realize the true taste of community browsing.
'Is this the true power of the Monkey's Paw?'
I absolutely couldn't take my fingers off SG Net.
As if honey crafted by an artisan's hand specifically for Undertaker Jang was smeared across the smartphone screen!
"Tsk. I fear you, Monkey's Paw! This is magical power that would have already seduced any ordinary human beyond recovery!"
"……."
Hayul, who happened to be crossing the living room, looked at me like I was pathetic—like a respectable younger sister looking at her jobless older brother—and disappeared.
Right.
In the 590th loop, I was fully experiencing what the life of a cult leader (hope edition) was like.
The world was going my way!
Every business I touched proceeded miraculously, and troubles I couldn't handle didn't occur from the very beginning.
However, I wasn't a cult leader.
I was an ordinary citizen who used the subway more than limousines. Therefore, I could guess without even looking at the route map that my destiny's next station name was 'Ruin.'
Now in the 7th year.
The 10th year, the debt maturity date of the reaction to the fortune I had asked the Monkey's Paw to defer, was approaching steadily.
'Should I commit suicide?'
An extraordinary decision was needed.
'Extreme choice' was a route option anyone who had lived as a debtor for 7 years could empathize with. Unlike others, for a regressor, it wasn't even that extreme.
If I just left a message saying 'Wow, thanks to the Fortune Conservation System, I sucked honey plentifully this loop^^ Then I'll be going to the next loop...' and exited the chatroom, wouldn't I be able to safely escape from that future mountain of debt?
It was terribly regretful to escape from this Three Kingdoms heaven, but a regressor had to know how to set aside selfish desires for a moment.
"Ah……. I wouldn't really recommend that, Teacher."
Another expert had a different opinion.
"Why?"
"Hmm. Rather, the situation might get even worse?"
Tian Yohwa, who heard my concerns, gave a bitter smile.
Why I confided such intimate worries to Tian Yohwa specifically—because among our members excluding me, she possessed an identity as a 'supernatural expert.'
As everyone knows, Tian Yohwa had sealed Mugan inside an hourglass.
Counting the anomalies from school ghost stories, she carried no less than 100 Pokemon with her.
If another trainer saw this, they would sue her for exceeding the Pokemon possession limit alone.
Fortunately, this world's genre wasn't a training work that imprisoned beasts with masochistic instincts and made them fight in a colosseum, but precisely because of that, the anomalies felt rightful hatred toward the warden who had imprisoned them.
In short, the hundred anomalies led by Mugan were reconsidering rebellion whenever they had the chance.
It wasn't for nothing that Tian Yohwa suffered from stress every day and binge-ate tteokbokki at the snack shop in front of the school.
Like the Saint, and like her too, the stronger the awakener, the closer they were to the danger of corruption—this was an unavoidable fate.
"The situation will get even worse?"
"Yes. It's just my prediction, though."
"Well. When I last checked, the 'Monkey's Paw' absolutely didn't notice the regression. It didn't even have the power to grant regression ability to Kuro, its original owner. So if I just close my eyes and regress, wouldn't the debt disappear too?"
"Ahaha. But because of that very Kuro or whatever person, the 'Monkey's Paw' ended up applying to everyone in the world, not just one individual, right?"
"……."
"People who make wishes might look at a glance like they're parasitizing the 'Monkey's Paw' anomaly. But from what I see, it's the exact opposite. The 'Monkey's Paw' is actually the parasitic type."
"An anomaly that parasitizes humans?"
"Yes!"
Tian Yohwa clapped her hands.
Despite the rather serious conversation, her expression showed she enjoyed sharing this kind of story with me.
Indeed, for Tian Yohwa who competed for control against isolation-class anomalies 365 days a year, I too must be a precious conversation partner.
There weren't many humans who could empathize about the fears of anomalies as much as the two of us.
"Think about it, Teacher. The Monkey's Paw probably can never grow stronger on its own, by itself. Someone has to make a wish to it, and only then can it use that wish as an opportunity, as a kind of excuse, to amplify its power."
"Oh my."
"From the Monkey's Paw's perspective, wouldn't Kuro have been incredibly grateful? If he had just prayed for ordinary desires, the Monkey's Paw would have remained a mediocre anomaly. But because Kuro wished for an excessively 'high-level wish,' the Monkey's Paw rose in rank to match that wish!"
"Then if, by any chance, I as a regressor run away thinking I'll just regress anyway……."
"The Monkey's Paw will transcend even that regression and gain the power to govern fortune and misfortune. That's just in the realm of speculation, though."
"Hmm."
"That's why I don't recommend suicide. More than anything, I don't want to see you pass away, Teacher. Heheh……."
It made sense.
Looking at it that way, even I, Undertaker Jang, who had pointed out Kuro's foolishness all this time, had ended up committing a foolish act.
'An ordinary person's fortune' and 'a 590th-loop regressor's fortune' were inevitably different in scale.
Just consider the scale of the things the Monkey's Paw had pulled off in this loop alone.
The dementia elderly Sword Empress underwent rejuvenation.
It made a meteor shower that should have appeared much later emerge in the East Sea, and even pulled in a UFO at an exquisite timing to make them collide.
As a result, a Black Great Wall that shouldn't have existed was created north of the Korean Peninsula.
In other words, the Monkey's Paw's power had grown enough to orchestrate 'fortuitous encounters' of this level at will.
According to the Library Society classification, shouldn't we already assess that its danger level had reached Ocean-class?
'Did I perhaps get seriously fucked?'
A sense of caution crept up.
Somehow, I had to resolve the situation before misfortune fully set in.
"Actually, I think you need to survive incredibly, reeaally tenaciously in this loop, Teacher."
"Why is that?"
"Suppose you pass away without experiencing all the misfortune equal to the fortune you enjoyed in this loop. Then the 'misfortune not yet fully repaid' might carry over to the next loop."
"Hmm……."
I rested my chin on my hand.
While conversing with Tian Yohwa, my head felt ticklishly stimulated somewhere.
'Wait. Something like a good idea is almost coming to mind……?'
At this point, I hadn't yet concretely realized what that 'good idea' was. That would be covered in the next episode.
However, the direction was properly set.
"Then, if what you say is true, I need to become as unfortunate as possible from now on."
"Ahaha. …Yes. But deliberately selecting only misfortunes to experience isn't something that goes as people wish either. That's troublesome."
"No, there is a method. And quite an exquisite countermeasure at that."
"Huh? Really?"
I nodded.
Then I spoke with endless seriousness.
"Yohwa."
"Yes, Teacher."
"Have you ever heard of the 'Hated Medicine'?"
"……?"
5
'Hated Medicine.'
Should I call it such a genre? There existed a certain meme.
Tian Yohwa tilted her head as if hearing it for the first time, which was natural. Because its origin was the neighboring country across the sea from the Korean Peninsula.
Some people commonly think that Japan lacks creativity and originality.
-Tonkatsu? Isn't that just a variation of cutlet?
-Japanese curry? They just changed Indian curry to suit Japanese tastes.
But that's merely prejudice.
If you just remove the [General Audience] filter from your corneas looking at the world, you will suddenly witness creativity gushing forth like Mt. Fuji from the Japanese archipelago.
Wasn't it the Japanese archipelago that produced that deformity called 'TS Three Kingdoms,' changing the genders of Three Kingdoms characters, also known as the Koihime genre?
Besides, there were numerous inventions that were difficult to mention for various reasons.
No region had displayed greater creativity than this since ancient Greece. (The Greeks impregnated their chief god's thigh, and made the human hero closest to invincible in history cross-dress.)
Anyway.
The 'Hated Medicine' too was one example of the archipelago's fiery creativity.
-If you take this medicine, your favorability will reverse!
-Favorability reverses, you say?
-Yes. People who liked you quite a lot until now, your family too, all humans will come to hate you by exactly that much. Literally, it's the 'Hated Medicine.'
-……?
-Every character who has been subtly showing you affection will completely change their expressions and curse at you to die quickly! Ah. Don't worry. The favorability of people who hated you from the start remains unchanged!
-Why on earth would you make such a medicine appear in a work?
-Because the medicine's effect has an expiration date.
-……??
-After the effect ends, now the surrounding characters start regretting. Looking at the protagonist who has become utterly exhausted from their own curses. Ah, what on earth have I done to the protagonist I liked? How could I say such terrible things……?
-What meaning is there in that?
-Huh? Isn't it delicious, a work where surrounding characters regret after wronging the protagonist?
-……???
Building up narrative over dozens of chapters to make the protagonist unhappy was extremely inefficient from a practical standpoint.
Modern people who always weighed efficiency wanted to quickly attach #Regret #Obsession #Exhaustion tags in a convenient manner.
The means was the 'Hated Medicine.'
An instant 3-minute misfortune jjajang developed by the Japanese.
Put simply, it could also be called a 'Favorability Reversal Medicine.' You just had to eat it to become unhappy.
So how did I, Undertaker Jang, come to know about this minor overseas genre? Well…….
I announce again that this was a story from the 590th-loop timeframe.
And around the 560th loop was when I had consumed all web novels in the world and inflicted misery on authors.
That concludes the explanation.
"So you're saying you'll consume the 'Hated Medicine' and deliberately cause 'misfortune' to escape the clutches of the Fortune Conservation System?"
"You understood well."
"Uncle, you've really gone crazy in a pretty way."
The very person who spread web novels to me, and the only one among our colleagues with the otaku power to know about the 'Hated Medicine.'
Odokseo nodded.
"That's a really good idea. As expected of my protagonist uncle. Let's test it right away!"
For reference, Odokseo liked exhaustion genre works.
"But where do we farm the Hated Medicine? It wasn't written in
"Tut tut. Dokseo-yah. Generally, you obtain ginseng from Joseon and queues from Qing China. Then isn't it obvious where the hunting ground to farm the Hated Medicine would be?"
"Ah."
Right.
We immediately set sail for the 'place of origin.'