Chapter 51
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The Judge I
Shin Noa
1
Continuing from the previous episode, let's continue the necromancer's story.
2
The reason I suddenly recruited the Baekhwa Girls' High School student council president, the second biggest lunatic on the Korean Peninsula (the first being, of course, the Sword Empress of Yuldo-guk), was not because I wanted to become best friends with lunatics.
There were deep and broad reasons for this.
And I should make clear that I, the Funeral Director, am far from being a mastermind character.
I'm not the type who draws up plans alone and then lecherously cackles while watching them fall apart.
Those haraguro-type characters are all adults who, having experienced failures in communication during childhood, transformed their hope for humanity into contempt for mankind—in other words, they're people who remain imprisoned by extremely infantile trauma and never manage to escape it.
"I see. But why are you glaring at me while saying that...?"
"What's important right now isn't that, Noto Do-ha."
"I see. Shall I gouge out your eyeballs, pickle them in salt, and dip them in soy sauce for you...?"
"Too much salty food is bad for your health."
"This fucking regressor bastard..."
True to someone who had a rough childhood, Noto Do-ha quickly grew angry and spat out curses.
Of course, I was an adult with proper character, so I knew how to respond calmly to the other person's anger.
"Cheon Yo-hwa, whom I scouted independently this time, will be classified as a very key resource in our plan."
"Why? Because you're a pervert with a sailor uniform fetish...?"
"I don't like school uniforms. You try being my age, Noto Do-ha. Everyone looks like kids."
"No, aren't you already nearly 1000 years old by your subjective standards, you old fossil? How am I supposed to be that age...?"
"That's not my concern. Anyway, the reason Cheon Yo-hwa's necromancy is important is that it provides us with stable 'manpower.'"
"Hmm..."
Noto Do-ha sipped her coffee. It was coffee I had made for her.
During my 1000 years (to be precise, at this point I was still only 771 years old), my barista skills had steadily followed an upward curve. It was still impossible to perfectly imitate Old Man Shō's café au lait, but with that exception, it was no exaggeration to say I had reached the pinnacle.
Even Noto Do-ha, who wore her cynical attitude toward everything like a signature, softened when drinking my coffee. Muttering, "Damn, why is this so delicious...?"
How proud. This is what makes being a regressor worthwhile.
"Is manpower that important? Honestly, in this day and age, the only thing in surplus is manpower..."
"I'm talking about the National Road Management Corps' manpower."
"Ah-"
Noto Do-ha nodded while holding her coffee cup with both hands.
"Hmm, true enough. While managing this organization, I've been gradually realizing it myself. The National Road Management Corps members are basically synonyms for suicide squads. If you send them into some hollow, there's a 20% chance they come back as aliens with flowers growing out of their heads, so..."
"If we assign dangerous tasks to zombie corpses from now on, the survival rate will increase significantly."
"Sounds plausible...? Let's try it."
"But there's a condition first."
"What condition...?"
I looked around. Though she hadn't had any lines until now, the Saintess was also silently sipping her coffee in a paper cup.
I smiled broadly in front of my trustworthy 'Regressor Alliance.'
"From now on, you are all Baekhwa Girls' High School graduates."
"..."
"Here, this is the 96th graduating class yearbook that I've manipulated in advance. You see the Class 2 photo here? Just vaguely claim it's Noto Do-ha and the Saintess's childhood. I was the vice student council president. The setting is that Noto Do-ha was the student council president and the Saintess was the secretary."
"..."
"And this is exclusive Baekhwa Girls' High School material I've written separately. Dormitory names, list of teachers who frequently contacted students, slang unique to this school—it's all written down, so memorize it."
"..."
Noto Do-ha looked at the Saintess.
The Saintess nodded.
"I've already memorized it."
"...Fuck, is this for real...?"
It was real.
"Hello! Seniors! Nice to meet you for the first time!"
A few days later.
We were able to directly witness Cheon Yo-hwa bowing her head right in front of us. Not just Cheon Yo-hwa but the Baekhwa Girls' High School student council—in other words, real survivors who weren't zombies—also stood in a line.
"Ah, yes... I'm Noto Do-ha..."
"Please speak comfortably, senior! Hehe. You were the student council president? I heard from Funeral Director senior that you need help from us junior student council members. Feel free to work us like dogs!"
"How much did you break this kid...?"
Noto Do-ha looked at me as if reproaching me.
I could only be regretful. Was this not truly an ignorant and foolish reaction? The 109th cycle awakened ones hadn't experienced what kind of lunatic group Baekhwa Girls' High School was, that's why they acted like that.
"Don't let your guard down. If you don't respect their concept, hell unfolds from that point on. I warned you."
"No, they seem like really nice kids...?"
"They are nice. But it's limited-time kindness. All of them are cannibals who go crazy if they don't consume human flesh at least once every four days."
"..."
Baekhwa Girls' High School had joined the National Road Management Corps.
That very night, 6 National Road Management Corps members 'enrolled' in Baekhwa Girls' High School.
The enrollment conditions weren't particularly demanding. Just a hole needed to be drilled in their skulls.
"What the fuck?"
Only then did Noto Do-ha realize the gravity of the situation.
"Funeral Director awakened one, what kind of crazy bastards did you bring here...?!"
"I warned you in advance."
"I didn't know it would be this bad...!"
"By the way, how did they die?"
Noto Do-ha handed me an incident report. Should I say it's typical of a former civil servant? Even in this perishing world, whenever an incident occurred, she always documented it.
――――――――――
Victim A: What is it? A new member?
Cheon Yo-hwa: Hello! I'm Cheon Yo-hwa, Baekhwa Girls' High School student council president!
Victim B: Huh? Girls' high? Student council? What's that, some roleplay bullshit?
Cheon Yo-hwa: What? No, I'm really the Baekhwa Girls' High School student council president!
Victim A: Oh my. Our new member learned strange things first thing. Just looking at your face, you seem past the age to graduate high school, what the...
Victim B: Yeah, hey. Even roleplay should be done by someone with some presence, otherwise people don't leave you alone. A scrub awakened one like you, no one acknowledges you. Student council, my ass.
Cheon Yo-hwa: (bizarre laughter)
――――――――――
Hmm.
Reading this far was sufficient.
According to the attached materials, parts of Victims A and B's bodies were discovered in canned food.
I diagnosed the victims' cause of death.
"This is suicide."
"Is this for real...?"
Noto Do-ha shuddered.
But she too, like me, was someone skilled in dealing with the 'Sword Empress.' She was a great person who had maxed out a skill specialized for lunatics called 'Lunatic-Social Skills.'
The moment she identified Cheon Yo-hwa as a lunatic of the Sword Empress type, Noto Do-ha immediately adjusted her stance.
"Cheon Yo-hwa, junior..."
"Yes! Noto Do-ha senior!"
"How is your CSAT preparation going these days?"
"Huh?"
"My. I heard from the seniors that if you're a student council president in your time, you should naturally get into Seoul National University at minimum. You must be aiming for somewhere high, right, Cheon Yo-hwa junior...?"
"..."
Noto Do-ha immediately established discipline and worked Cheon Yo-hwa like a dog. For reference, both Noto Do-ha and I created a Seoul National University admission certificate and blatantly showed it to Cheon Yo-hwa.
This too was a forged document. So what? What can you do about it?
I even had a setting of being a German Language and Literature major. As everyone knows, my German was perfect.
Moreover, with [Complete Memory Ability] added, I could even perform the feat of reciting Goethe's Faust and Schiller's poems on the spot.
I raised my eyebrows as if troubled.
"Hmm. Isn't this basic for a Baekhwa Girls' High School student council president?"
"..."
Cheon Yo-hwa surrendered in tears before her seniors' authority.
If she had been 'fake,' she would have raised a white flag and abandoned her concept at this point. But Cheon Yo-hwa was real. In her mind, Baekhwa Girls' High School existed, and naturally, the school's traditions were intact.
"I will diligently follow the seniors' guidance..."
The monster of the academy city who had once driven all awakened ones on the Korean Peninsula to terror in past cycles had vanished without a trace. Only a pitiful student remained.
'Hoist with one's own petard' surely refers to this kind of spectacle.
"Oh. The zombie legion is actually useful...?"
And Noto Do-ha confirmed that Cheon Yo-hwa had value worth using even while 'continuing this kind of roleplay.'
Then there was no reason to hesitate any longer. Noto Do-ha, the incarnation of pragmatism, immediately forced Cheon Yo-hwa to deploy from the National Road Management Corps under the name of 'external field practice.'
The National Road Management Corps' unit organization had successfully evolved.
-Reconnaissance Team: Baekhwa Girls' High School Guard (zombies). At least one awakened one commands the zombies. They break through the hollow first, confirm what dangers exist, and report to the main force. Since zombies cannot make detailed judgments, they perform only the simplest missions.
-Main Force: A strike force composed of at least two awakened ones. They travel from city to city checking roads, escorting migrants and merchant groups traveling together, and commanding the zombie reconnaissance team.
-Support Team: A unit with the capacity to immediately make at least temporary repairs when roads are damaged. In short, manual labor.
With the addition of the 'Reconnaissance Team' by Cheon Yo-hwa, the National Road Management Corps made a leap forward. The member disappearance rate, which had reached a whopping 20%, dropped to under 5%.
Instead, the ratio of zombies turning into real corpses increased proportionally, but no one cared. In a world where even human rights had vanished, it was too harsh a world to consider zombie rights as well.
"So this is the true utility of corpses...?"
Corpses were good things.
They could work without eating, felt no pain, didn't need human rights considered, and above all, zombies that acted only as pre-programmed. This was truly like a drug that, once tasted, one couldn't escape from. Especially the more one pursued pragmatism like Noto Do-ha.
Noto Do-ha had awakened to a new taste.
3
"Funeral Director awakened one. What are zombies...?"
One day, I received such a question.
"Yes?"
"Think about it. All the zombies Cheon Yo-hwa creates perform their respective roles. Security guard, student, teacher... Since they only act as pre-programmed, they can't respond to unexpected situations, but anyway, limited to those roles, they look quite like people..."
"What are you trying to say?"
"Aren't these not zombies, but just NPCs...?"
Noto Do-ha's eyes gleamed darkly.
"Funeral Director awakened one, you called them zombies based on external characteristics, but from what I see, that's not an accurate naming. Cheon Yo-hwa is a necromancer, but she's not mass-producing 'zombies'... She's a kind of designer who creates 'NPCs.' In some sense, you could say she's installing 'AI'..."
"Hoh."
Not zombies, but NPCs.
It was naming typical of Noto Do-ha, who judged counterparts not by appearance but purely by utility.
"An interesting interpretation. But even so, does anything change?"
"Well, that's something we'll have to find out from now on..."
Noto Do-ha grinned.
"From what I see, a great many things could change..."
"Is that so?"
"Yes. In that sense, could you call Guild Master Dang Seo-rin..."
No matter how much she was the National Road Management Corps Commander, Noto Do-ha was not in a position to order Dang Seo-rin around. But if it was me, the only member of the 'Fine Dining Pilgrimage Club,' Dang Seo-rin would comply obediently.
The next day, Dang Seo-rin came to the National Road Management Corps headquarters, clearly showing her annoyance.
"What's going on? I'm busy these days."
"Ah, I apologize. I asked the Funeral Director awakened one to bring you. This is truly something only the Great Witch of the Three Thousand Worlds can do... Ah. And this is a Necronomicon copy I happened to find at a used bookstore recently. The moment I saw it, I thought it was a binding worthy of the Great Witch's library..."
"If you're a guild master living on the Korean Peninsula, you should naturally cooperate with the National Road Management Corps' work."
"Could you cast a magic chant...?"
Thud.
Dang Seo-rin placed huge books on the table, and even to me, a regressor, the book titles were quite unfamiliar.
[Supreme Court Case Law Collection], [Latest Case Law Collection: Three Concepts], [Civil Execution Law], [Tax Case Law by Key Issues], [Criminal Procedure Law: Articles and Case Law Collection]...
Each one had viciously thick volumes. They must have been created with the purpose of physically and mentally destroying human heads. Their overwhelming presence was enough to make even Dang Seo-rin hesitate momentarily.
"What are you going to use these for?"
"Heh. Don't worry. Great Witch, you just need to use [Repeat] [Voice Reading] [Playback]..."
"I, is that so? Got it."
Dang Seo-rin went into the warehouse and cast a multi-chant.
Before long, numerous case law books in the warehouse began turning page by page, automatically supporting 'voice reading.' Naturally, it was quite a magical sight.
And after sending Dang Seo-rin away, Noto Do-ha immediately brought Cheon Yo-hwa to the warehouse.
"Cheon Yo-hwa, junior..."
"Yes, senior!"
"Bring about three security guards and leave them here. And could I ask you to input into those people? [To remember all the sounds coming from this warehouse]..."
"Huh? Uh, to input that much, it consumes a huge amount of stamina..."
"It's a senior's order..."
"Hwaang..."
And at this point, I stood with my mouth open in shock. I couldn't understand at all what kind of mental world one needed to have to reach such an idea, and precisely because of that, I couldn't help but marvel.
"Noto Do-ha, you don't mean...?"
"Yes."
Heh, Noto Do-ha sneered.
"Now that the National Road Management Corps has settled in, shouldn't we start making courts too...?"
This person... She was trying to create 'AI judges' using zombies!