Chapter 72
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Designer II
Shin No-a
4
'They said the headquarters is in Hawaii, right? Then shall we take a light trip to Hawaii?'
To come up with such an idea, the 46th iteration me was too much of a novice.
In other ordinary web novels, if a regressor had rolled through 46 iterations, the reaction would be 'Oh, they must be a total veteran? But seeing how they couldn't save the world in all those iterations, aren't they kind of incompetent?' But in my story, the 46th iteration was nothing more than a fresh newbie who looked like they were bursting with vitamins.
Anyway, like most Koreans who said they'd traveled abroad, the 46th iteration me had at most visited Japan or China.
India? America? Europe? I only grasped information through circulating rumors, never once experiencing the soil of those lands on my own shoes.
Ah, the old man Shuo did once say he'd show me around his hometown, grinding his teeth about it, but promises made between men don't seem to last more than a thousand years no matter how long. That damn old man.
-This is Sector 7, *static*. I am Director Martin Russell. *static*, the food stored in the bunker is slowly depleting.
-Were the series of projects the Foundation prepared for world destruction never activated? Or were they already activated, and this place is merely a remnant of the abandoned world?
-Either way... *static*, I will continue recording with the belief that my voice files may someday be of help. Director Martin Russell. Day 677 of survival.
The broadcast continued.
I named this phenomenon the 'Foundation Radio Broadcast of Unknown Origin,' or simply 'Foundation Broadcast' for short.
And after spending a long time, I succeeded in figuring out the characteristics of the 'Foundation Broadcast' in considerable detail.
1. The broadcast never proceeds if there are listeners other than me around the radio.
It was quite strange, so I called Sim Ar-yeon and Seo Gyu to sit them down, but the radio remained silent.
Eventually, both of them shook their heads saying 'Sigh, the Guild Master/hyung-nim is playing pranks with anomalies again...'
Wait, was I really that untrustworthy? Why? How come?
As a test, I suggested to the Saintess to listen together with me using her Thousand-League Eye, but whether that counted as a 'listener' too, the radio remained dead.
-Um... Mr. Undertaker, as bored as you may be, playing pranks using anomalies as material is honestly a bit troubling. Please restrain yourself.
"...."
I was wrongly accused.
2. Even when iterations changed, the 'Foundation Broadcast' still occurred, and the 'old man' always broadcasted from the Sector 7 bunker on Molokai Island, Hawaii.
However, this anomaly only appeared on the Zenith K731 radio, an antique I personally collected. Other radios could never pick up the 'Foundation Broadcast.'
Why that is, I don't kn?ow.
The ecology of anomalies is truly mysterious.
-This is Martin Russell. Uh, um. Escaped entities are still observed to be overwhelmingly concentrated in the North American region... Damn. It's already day 1203. Has humanity survived? Am I really the last survivor?
The broadcast times were jumbled, but generally between 1 AM and 7 PM. If the broadcaster's claim that he's located in Hawaii is true, that would be 6 AM to 12 PM Hawaii time.
Exactly the hours when a person would be awake.
And most importantly...
3. The broadcast content changes subtly with each iteration.
In the 46th iteration, he clearly said an entity called 'Evil Dragon' appeared in Sector 7 and destroyed the Foundation, but for example, in the 49th iteration...
-God! The moonlight! Ah, the goddess of Parmenides has finally gone mad! Broadcasting urgently. Never, under any circumstances, make contact with the moonlight! Unless you want to melt like candle wax!
-Annihilated? Have all the Foundation's organizations really been annihilated? What about backups? Oh my god. My god, why. Why did this worst-case scenario have to...
He wailed like that, broadcasting that so-called 'moonlight' had exterminated humanity.
When iterations shifted, the way the world ended changed subtly each time as well.
I drank my café au lait and smiled bitterly.
"If this is true, North America would be an otherworldly realm on par with the Indian subcontinent."
Though I speculated at the time that it was probably lies.
I didn't particularly intend to subjugate the 'Foundation Broadcast.' It didn't harm humanity in any way other than whispering to me through the radio, did it?
Rather, the 'Foundation Broadcast' served as excellent BGM when I wanted to listen to the radio for entertainment.
I'll say it again, there wasn't much entertainment in this era. But there's a radio channel where the content changes every time? Jackpot.
Going one step further, the settings of the 'Foundation' that the old man subtly revealed each iteration gave me much inspiration. You could say I learned from it in many ways.
What I learned was...
5
"Information standardization."
Returning to the 562nd iteration.
Oh Dok-seo tilted her head with a blank expression in front of me. From the radio placed beside the table, Mozart's symphony flowed leisurelessly.
"Information... standard, what?"
"The so-called 'Foundation' has established very detailed grades and rules for entities. Hmm. For example, let's say there's a gremlin."
A gremlin is an anomaly that attaches to all electronic devices and breaks them strangely.
Once in Gyeongsangnam-do, a rumor circulated that gremlins only infected televisions and radios, while cellphones remained fine.
Conversely, in Gyeongsangbuk-do, a warning circulated that cellphones were actually the most dangerous.
Even in Gyeonggi-do, the belief that all electronic devices except CCTV were safe spread openly. Can you believe it?
It was all the harmful effects of humanity's information transmission capability being destroyed.
"This makes information sharing difficult even within the Korean Peninsula. In the era when civilization was intact, well, video clips and such could be shared... but."
Currently, mass media was completely annihilated except for radio. SG-net served as a place for information sharing, but even that wasn't perfect.
"The chaotic nature of anomalies is one thing, but how would you express how powerful an anomaly is?"
"Um..."
"S-class? A-class? How much difference is there between an S-class anomaly and an A-class anomaly, and how dangerous are they? Combat power 1000? 2000? Well, let's say it has 1200 combat power. Does that number intuitively make sense for what it represents?"
"...No."
Exactly.
Therefore, inspired by the 'Foundation' in the radio broadcast, I launched a virtual organization called the 'Library Society.'
The setting was simple. A secret group that had been researching anomalies for a very long time and therefore established 'professional classification methods,' so-called 'standards.'
But in reality, it was a database containing the experience and knowledge of me, Undertaker the regressor, intact.
It was an Akashic Record forged with my blood and sweat while fighting countless anomalies through numerous regressions.
The 'standards' established by the Library Society, in other words, the danger grades of anomalies, were as follows.
Lv.1: Village. Village-class.
Literally, a danger grade assigned to anomalies capable of destroying a single village.
"It's close to the Maginot Line of 'you need at least this much to be treated as a dangerous anomaly.' It also serves to filter out minor anomalies."
Scritch scratch. I wrote examples in my notebook and showed her.
Perhaps because she was a literature enthusiast, Oh Dok-seo was interested in this 'setting collection.' With eyes not yet recovered from shock, she remarkably followed my writing.
"A single goblin isn't worth assigning a danger grade. But 30 goblins? 40? This is enough to classify as village-class."
"Aha...?"
"In other words, even if it's the lowest grade, once village-class is assigned, it's essentially the same as a judgment of 'very dangerous' being passed from that moment. Ordinary people must unconditionally flee, and unless an awakened one is combat-specialized, they should generally avoid it. Yes. I'm talking about you, Oh Dok-seo."
"...."
In reality, most awakened ones donate their necks fighting village-class anomalies one-on-one.
Even 'Puppeteer' Lee Ha-yool, in some iteration, overflowing with overconfidence, fought a village-class anomaly and lost one arm.
From my perspective, the danger grade names used by the 'Foundation' were cool, but for ordinary people who knew nothing, the reaction would inevitably be 'So exactly how dangerous is that?'
I prioritized intuitiveness in selecting terminology. 'Dangerous enough to annihilate a village = village-class.'
"How is it? Simple?"
"...Yeah. Simple."
"From the next danger grade onward, it goes beyond simply threatening individual lives."
Lv.2: Polis. City-class.
Entities belonging here, once they appear, basically devastate a city. Absolutely devastating bastards.
"The Ten Races are a representative case."
The anomalies 'Chaos' and 'Greed' I mentioned when traveling to China's Mount Hua were also city-class.
The number of casualties those two ground up was close to ten million. That's only an estimate though.
The Ten Races seem laughable now, but in the early iterations, they alone destroyed the Korean Peninsula. Even city-class is just a wall of wailing for awakened ones, you know?
The main culprits that turned modern nations' clock hands back to the Iron Age are mostly city-class.
"Whether ordinary person or awakened, if you're not prepared for battle beforehand, you need to flee like your tail's on fire. Of course, the probability of not being able to flee is much higher."
"Whoa... Seeing uncle one-shot them, it doesn't really sink in..."
"Tsk tsk."
That's why I tried to avoid one-man shows as much as possible in the Ten Races subjugation and left it to other awakened ones.
"Anyway, next."
Lv.3: Continent. Continent-class.
If city-class anomalies are human despair, continent-class anomalies are humanity's despair.
"From this point, the preservation of the Homo sapiens species itself begins to be seriously threatened."
"...."
The world tree 'Udumbara' that spread zombie virus throughout East Asia using immortality as bait.
The 'Meteor Shower' that continued falling for 7 years and eventually turned the entire world into ashen territory.
The very culprits that make modern humanity spontaneously cry out 'No, this is bullshit! Fuck!'
"Uncle, wait a minute."
"Hm?"
"If Meteor Shower is only level 3, does that mean the next level exists too?"
It seemed like nonsense, but thinking about it, the serialized content Oh Dok-seo viewed through [Prophecy] was about 40 chapters... In other words, it only contained content from before even the 20th iteration by my standards.
Then she wouldn't know.
I slid my pen.
"Yes. Of course it exists."
Lv.4: Five Oceans. Ocean-class.
"Ocean-class..."
Oh Dok-seo muttered looking at my notebook.
"...There's a bit of a disconnect from the situation uncle was in, in the novel I read, so I'm bewildered. Uncle was definitely a hot-blooded male character in bloody battles with the Ten Races..."
"Ah- I miss those times. Those were good days. I thought I'd save the world within 30 iterations no matter what..."
"...What anomalies are in ocean-class?"
"I'll describe them, but you probably won't get a feel even if you hear. There are no illustrations Sim Ar-yeon drew yet either."
The 'Eight Million' that would descend on the Japanese archipelago. The 'Asura,' 'Astra,' and 'Ganges Sands' that would turn the Indian subcontinent into the most dangerous void on Earth.
I jokingly always say the Korean Peninsula's geographical position is a hell peninsula, but compared to those regions, it's a fairy.
I'll say it again, absolutely do not travel overseas in this day and age.
After hearing all my explanations, Oh Dok-seo's face turned pale.
"I-I have to fight anomalies like that? Me too?"
"Don't be too scared. The 561st iteration you, the 560th iteration you, the 559th iteration you, the 557th iteration you all endured well."
"...."
"This iteration's you will endure well too."
"...Wait. Why did you skip the 558th iteration me? What happened to me then?"
"...."
"I said why did you skip it!"
I turned my gaze away.
"No... Aagh! Uncle! I only have the [Prophecy] ability to begin with! Why do you drag a non-combat personnel around battlefields!"
"Whoa, calm down. Calm down. Do you think I'd drag you around without any countermeasures? Dok-seo, you're actually a multi-ability awakened one. If you just awaken your second ability, there won't be any problem no matter what battlefield you get dragged to."
"...Really?"
"Sigh, it's true. I'm telling you, you can survive a battlefield with a 100% probability? You just need to complete the Oh Dok-seo customized training curriculum verified through numerous iterations. Just trust me."
"...I'm really only trusting uncle?"
"Of course."
Instead, the training curriculum is hellishly intense, and the 558th iteration Oh Dok-seo actually crossed the River Jordan during training, but that was an accident where misfortune and bad luck overlapped, and it will never happen again. No sir.
"Ugh. How did I end up tangled with this crazy uncle... I shouldn't have read that web novel in the first place..."
"Not all anomalies have overwhelming physical power. We'll start with easy and fun ones like 'Trolley Dilemma' or 'Hero Syndrome,' so don't worry."
"How can an anomaly be easy and fun? Uncle, your sensibilities are definitely strange too... Oh right. Then who was the most unusual among the anomalies uncle has dealt with so far?"
"I'll tell you that later."
I left Oh Dok-seo in despair and sipped my café au lait. The coffee had gone cold while I was telling stories, but the volume that coiled around my tongue was still superb.
――Looking at this kid's expression, I should hide the fact that I never once mentioned that the danger grades of anomalies end at level 4.
Lv.5: Alienation. Alien God-class.
The final level. These were the true main enemies of me, the regressor. The culprits who forced me to repeat iterations close to eternity.
Well, there's no need to explain everything to Oh Dok-seo all at once.
We had plenty of time left.
"Ah."
Oh Dok-seo stood up from her chair.
"Sorry, I need to use the restroom for a moment."
"You don't have to announce that, just go."
"Ugh. When I'm with uncle I end up drinking too much coffee..."
As Oh Dok-seo grumbled and left her seat.
From the Zenith K731, a vintage radio made of maple wood that had been quietly playing Mozart's symphony, static noise came through with a crackle.
-*static*, this is Sector 7 Director Martin Russell. Damn. The zombie virus landing in California has been confirmed via observation equipment. The nuclear warheads are... What? What the hell is the Foundation doing? Why are the missiles heading... Oh my god! No! Stop! Oh! God, please have mercy on humanity....
"...."
I offered a moment of silence in my heart for the humanity of the North American region that once again met a new destruction in this iteration.
6
There's an afterword.
At first glance, it might seem like the episode ends here, and actually, the conversation I had with Oh Dok-seo in the 562nd iteration ended there.
But regarding the 'Library Society,' a mystery still remained.
I decided to always be as honest as possible with you all, so I have no choice but to confess about this riddle here as well.
It was the 924th iteration. That is, it was an event that occurred much, much later.
"Uh, hyung-nim."
"Yeah?"
"I think you need to come over here and check this out."
Called by our SG-man Seo Gyu, I approached the computer. Seo Gyu was managing the community.
"What's going on?"
"Well, you know. A while ago, hyung-nim, you told me to make a library bulletin board? Or something like that."
"I did."
"The traffic there has suddenly... really suddenly increased. I thought I should ask if hyung-nim is working on something."
"Hmm. That's probably Ar-yeon's doing."
"Sim Ar-yeon? Her?"
"Yeah. I put Ar-yeon in charge of managing the Library Society bulletin board."
Even after hearing my answer, Seo Gyu made a strange expression.
"No... Even if Sim Ar-yeon is a community-dwelling jobless ghost, to this extent...?"
"Is she an ordinary ghost?"
"Well, of course. But, no. Still, this doesn't make sense? Look here, hyung-nim."
Seo Gyu showed me the computer screen in detail. When he scrolled the mouse up with a swish, posts poured down in a cascade.
Literally like a downpour.
"Just today, 400 posts were uploaded. Uh, just now. Another one. Did you see?"
"...."
"They're not just nonsense posts either. Most are secret posts, but if you look like this with administrator privileges... Look!"
I looked.
――――――――――
[Library Society Anomaly Dictionary]
'Illustrator'
Aliases: Illustrator, Fan Art
Danger Grade: None
Contamination Grade: Unknown
Habitat: SG-net (Internet Community)
Decryption: All Library Society information, except for inevitably lost documents, has been safely migrated to the SG-net Library Society Anomaly Dictionary bulletin board.
However, starting from a certain point, 'attachments' began appearing on these documents. The attachments are all 'illustrations.' In other words, image files.
The illustrations contain the forms of anomalies, and it has been confirmed through cross-verification by multiple librarians that these forms are 'very accurate.'
The anomaly spreads void poison not only to its actual form but also to imitations. That is, copies photographed or filmed. The illustrations in question are extremely dangerous.
The Book Burning Department attempted book burning 501 times but ultimately failed to delete the illustrations. It has been officially recognized that all Library Society documents have been contaminated by the 'Illustrator.'
Below are added the advice of a Book Burning Department librarian and the orders of a Forbidden Book Management Department librarian.
[Pyromancer V]
It was the best solution to add an [Open/Hide] function to all document illustrations.
It was also confirmed that documents with attached illustrations have all been unlocked from secret status and are being disclosed to the general public.
Librarians, do not arbitrarily open and view the illustrations. If confirmation is necessary, please formally request and obtain approval from the Book Burning Department.
[Sea of Heavenly Understanding M]
The Forbidden Book Management Department informs you. All librarian activity records remain recorded, and whether illustrations have been viewed is also stored.
We disclose to the general public not only the personal information but also all previous community activity history of 'Painter Viscount' belonging to the Prophecy Department, who viewed illustrations without authorization 41 times in violation of Book Burning Department guidelines.
The history includes all activities conducted under librarian aliases and activities conducted anonymously. The disclosure scope includes connection times, post contents, and comment contents.
Additionally, we order Painter Viscount to live together with a Book Burning Department librarian henceforth. The LSO procedure is suspended for Painter Viscount.
――――――――――
"...."
A post with content I'd never seen before was openly uploaded.
'Pyromancer? V? What is this?'
The Library Society was nothing more than a setting game created by me hundreds of iterations ago.
Things like Sea of Heavenly Understanding and Black Book Archive were all just my masks, and naturally, I hadn't written posts like this.
Above all.
There was no character like 'Pyromancer' in my setting collection. V... perhaps Viscount? Does it mean the title of viscount?
'My setting collection is... self-replicating without my knowledge?'
Beside me, Seo Gyu spoke while spitting.
"Right? They're all properly written posts. Hyung-nim. No matter how much of a crazy ghost Sim Ar-yeon is, how could she write posts at this speed?"
I fell silent. Partly because I had no answer, but more than that, I was too shocked.
'...This is the first time I've seen this phenomenon.'
Again, this was the 924th iteration.
Truly, really, completely new events in my life had become as rare as finding a diamond fragment by the Ganges River.
"And there's even a language translation function attached. Hyung-nim. You see this [Language Selection] button? It seems to be translated into all the world's languages?"
"...Could it be that AI or something is continuously writing posts?"
"That could be possible but... how? Non-awakened ones can't even access SG-net. Unless someone awakened a skill like 'AI Utilization' or 'Automatic Post Writing,' doing this is impossible."
"...You're right."
"And I checked the IPs with administrator privileges, and all these IPs are properly registered on SG-net through proper procedures. So if an awakened person did this, they would need to have [SG-net ID Creation] ability too... Would that be possible?"
"...If there's a skill called [Internet Community Trolling] that unified all those abilities into one awakening, it would be possible."
"Ah."
"But it's definitely an anomalous phenomenon. I'll report the current situation to the Saintess and ask if location tracking is possible. You keep monitoring too. Good job telling me."
"Yes, hyung-nim."
Not long after, an answer came from the Saintess.
[Location tracking is impossible.]
"What?"
[I cannot confirm the awakened ones of those IPs with my Thousand-League Eye. Mr. Undertaker. Do these people really exist as real humans?]
"...."
A chill ran down my spine for the first time in a very long while.
Numerous hypotheses crossed my mind. The possibility of a skill that nullifies the Saintess's Thousand-League Eye, the possibility of an anomaly where other world lines are intersecting on SG-net, the possibility that even anomalies have become able to access SG-net...
I looked at the computer monitor. Every time I refreshed, the bulletin board laid eggs with documents in real-time.
"Then... if they're not humans who exist in reality, where do the writers posting hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of posts in real-time on that internet site right now... exist?"
[....]
The Saintess had no answer.
...I'll say it again.
It seemed there were still many unknown mysteries in this world that I didn't know about.
- Designer. End.
I'm an infinite regressor telling stories.