Chapter 8
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Determinist I
Shin Noah
1
When you think about it, what would you say is the greatest nemesis of the three main web novel protagonist archetypes—the Regressor, the Possessor, and the Reincarnator?
Powerful monsters? The protagonist wins anyway.
Stress? Trauma? Obsessions?
Those aren't wrong answers either. But I can't exactly call them unique adversaries to regressors. After all, stress is a weakness shared by all homo sapiens, ranging from 35-year-old unemployed bachelors to 60-year-old American presidents.
Baldness? How could you say something so cruel?
The answer, surprising yet not surprising at all, is... the 'Butterfly Effect.'
- Can a butterfly flapping its wings in Beijing, China cause a tornado on the other side of the world?
The butterfly effect.
A theory stating that when initial values change, the magnitude of change increases exponentially over time to nearly unmanageable levels.
I will say this with confidence. This butterfly effect, so familiar to us all, is in fact the villain of villains for regressors, an arch-enemy impossible to avoid on a narrow bridge, and without a doubt their sworn enemy.
Alas and alack!
How many regressors have fallen (within creative works) due to this butterfly effect?
- I am a reader well-versed in every web novel, and an industry authority whom no one can match when it comes to the worldview I've now entered. According to my interpretation, first I must save the maid who dies absurdly early to prevent the first button of tragedy from being fastened... Huh? Why did saving the maid cause the Demon King to invade?
- I felt sorry for a child starving beneath the imperial palace wall and treated them kindly, and now 10 years later the Crown Prince is proposing to me? I just wanted to live a peaceful daily life, so what should I do now?
- Wait, why is the protagonist so weak (after I solved all the quests the original protagonist should have solved, recruited the allies who should have joined the protagonist's party, and monopolized all the items and fortuitous encounters the protagonist should have consumed)? Well well, I suppose I have no choice but to step in myself.
Of course, the latter case is closer to a matter of conscience and intelligence than the butterfly effect.
Whether fantasy, modern fantasy, romance fantasy, or alternate history, there is no situation more terrible for the Regressor-Possessor-Reincarnator trio than the butterfly effect.
Therefore, today let me tell the story of how I, Jang Uisa, a highly skilled regressor, kill the butterfly effect.
2
The first time I felt something was strange. In other words, when I experienced the butterfly effect's power firsthand, was around the 30th iteration.
"Hmm?"
At first it was merely a slight sense of incongruity.
'Was this café... originally in business?'
After the tutorial ended, I waited about 6 months before going to the old Baekje Hospital building. It was definitely that building with the old man Sho's corpse decorating the rooftop.
Sometimes I think of this place and come to pass the time.
But at the café where there should have been a business suspension notice hanging, a man was somehow running the place.
I couldn't hide my bewilderment at this situation I was experiencing for the first time across all iterations.
"Excuse me......"
"Yes, customer. Welcome."
The man smiled. He was the type who invested 80% of his fashion and styling into his beard.
"Pardon me, but is this alright? Running business like this. The world is in complete chaos right now."
"Ah... right. I was planning to evacuate to Japan too, but I heard day before yesterday that an enormous typhoon and tornado struck the South Sea, sinking all the evacuation ships."
The man sighed.
This was news to me, having just come down from Seoul to Busan.
"A typhoon, you say?"
"Yeeep. I don't know for sure, but thousands must have died. Busan Port is extremely noisy right now. I thought about boarding a ship even though the black market ticket I bought for a high price would go to waste, but... The shipowner threatened me, saying he'd launch in a week, take it or leave it. Well, what can I do? I don't have anything else to do, so I'm planning to run business for at least a week. Money doesn't mean much anymore anyway. Haha."
The shopkeeper laughed. I couldn't laugh.
'A typhoon at this time?'
I possessed the [Complete Memory Ability]. Literally, a supernatural power that stored all memories of the past exactly as they were.
In fact, thanks to this skill acquired in the 5th iteration, I could spin tales like this to all of you. I could recall in detail what events I experienced in the 30th iteration and what I thought at the time.
Therefore, I could state this with 100% certainty.
'...This is an anomalous situation.'
To say it again, in the 30th iteration, I arrived at the café at the point when '6 months had passed after the tutorial ended.'
This could be called the very early part of the early game.
My actions in the very early part were always similar. It would be no exaggeration to say there was almost nothing different compared to the 29th and 28th iterations.
My actions had changed nothing. Nevertheless, in this iteration's world, a 'typhoon' had swept through the South Sea.
'What is this? What on earth is the cause?'
All things have cause and effect.
For a cultured person like myself who strictly rejects sophistry like the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics and worships only causal determinism, this was an extremely confusing situation.
"Excuse me, customer."
"Yes?"
"I'm truly sorry to say this, but if you're not going to order......"
"Ah. My apologies. I got lost in thought for a moment. Um, could I have a café au lait?"
"My goodness. Of course. That'll be 59,500 won."
"......"
The café au lait, hit directly by apocalyptic inflation, tasted terribly foul.
But the incident that drove me even crazier occurred in the next iteration, that is, the 31st iteration.
[Closed due to personal circumstances.]
When I went to the café at a similar time again, this time the business suspension notice was hanging there as before.
"Well, now."
What on earth?
It was too early to be bewildered. Aside from whether the café was open or not, numerous variables occurred separately across various iterations.
"Huh? Saintess, have you moved?"
"Pardon?"
"In previous iterations, you always lived at your home in Yongsan."
"Ah... It was a bit difficult gathering feed for the fish. There was someone at a nearby guild who has aquariums as a hobby like me. So I moved to a closer place."
"......"
On a minor note, in the 47th iteration, the Saintess's residential address changed.
"Citizens! I hereby declare on this spot that the new capital of the Republic of Korea is now Busan Special City!"
"Waaaah!"
"Normal nation! Normal nation!"
In the 71st iteration, the Mayor of Busan took control of the Korean peninsula's political situation. I could only be appalled.
That mayor was someone who, originally, would have fled to Fukuoka, Japan and established a second provisional government. (For reference, he was a model family man who even carefully brought along his second family when fleeing.)
Other than that, a mid-boss level monster that should have crossed into North Korea suddenly became enamored with democracy and proceeded to defect back, or a meteor shower that should have fallen in South Gyeongsang Province fell in South Jeolla Province instead—all sorts of bizarre parades took place.
'No.'
I felt somewhat troubled.
'This makes it difficult to predict the future, doesn't it?'
Of course, in the majority of iterations, causality proceeded 'normally' without any particular issues. However, sometimes, truly out of nowhere, complete chaos erupted.
Well, if I dismissed it as an occasional experience like trying pineapple pizza, it wouldn't matter much.
But as a believer in classical determinism, I had to uncover the cause of such anomalous phenomena to have peace of mind.
[Mr. Jang Uisa.]
Thus, in the 82nd iteration.
Finally, a clue was given.
[A typhoon is currently being observed in the waters off Incheon. It's an enormously large tornado.]
"Huh? A tornado in the Yellow Sea? That should be difficult given the shallow water depth."
[But it is a situation that is actually occurring. I am currently sharing the vision of an Awakened who is out at Incheon Port. Please be careful as we don't know where the tornado will head.]
"Well, Incheon already has many refugees, so then......"
[Don't worry. I've already sent messages in the name of the Constellation to other Awakened. Evacuation is underway.]
I hurriedly accessed SG Net. Sure enough, the bulletin board was already in an uproar.
-Anonymous: Real-time breaking news) Tornado appearing in the West Seaㄷㄷㄷ
-[Samcheon]WitchTrialJudge: I'd like to help, but it's too far away.
-GoryeoJang: Come on~ Old folks, let's get in the coffin~ Come on~ Old folks, let's get in the coffin~
-dolLHoUse: Dangerous.
-Anonymous: This isn't a joke, looking at the photos it's pretty serious? If it's that size on the horizon, the diameter is at least 3km. I don't know how powerful it is, but absolutely don't approach. If you're unlucky you'll get struck by lightning and die.
Amidst the chaos, someone had uploaded photos and videos of the enormous tornado.
This kind of situation had never occurred before.
"......!"
At that moment, a flash of insight struck like lightning.
"That's it! The typhoon!"
[Pardon?]
"The typhoon! No, I mean the tornado!"
Thinking back, the café owner in the 30th iteration had also said it.
'Day before yesterday, an enormous typhoon and tornado blew through the South Sea, sinking all the evacuation ships.'
That's what he said.
I spoke with conviction.
"In every iteration where a tornado blows wildly, the progression of events has been strangely distorted. The typhoon is definitely the culprit... no, the one who caused the typhoon is the culprit."
[I'm sorry, Mr. Jang Uisa. I don't quite understand what you mean...]
"I'll explain later. Saintess, can you track the typhoon's path in the waters off Incheon and trace its origin as much as possible?
[...It seems difficult, but I'll try. I just need to examine which areas suffered typhoon damage.]
Wait a moment, the Saintess whispered.
She was probably getting a map. A moment later, the Saintess swept through all the cities adjacent to the Yellow Sea and reported.
[Hmmm... The range is too wide, so it's not certain. Mr. Jang Uisa. Please note that this is merely speculation.]
"That's fine. Where is it?"
[China. Beijing.]
Beijing, China. A tornado.
"Ah."
At that moment, for some reason, I felt like I understood this tornado's true identity.
3
-Can a butterfly flapping its wings in Beijing cause a tornado on the other side of the world?
A phrase briefly expressing the butterfly effect.
Originally, the source text indicates 'Brazil' rather than 'Beijing.' The interesting fact is that even this source text is merely a slogan invented later.
When a meteorologist first presented the butterfly effect at an academic conference, it was a 'seagull' that was cited, not a 'butterfly.' Naturally, there was no Brazil and no typhoon either.
Just looking at this point, one can clearly see how roughly the anomalies appearing in this world ignore human history.
Anomalies all possess a humanities-style sensibility that doesn't bother with factual rigor.
Of course, a cultured person like myself with a strict scientific-causal deterministic perspective might ask the following:
-Why did the butterfly effect occur in Beijing rather than Brazil?
-The butterfly effect theory is originally about initial values appearing as completely different result values after a long time, so why is it shooting wind blasts in all directions from the very beginning?
I don't know.
No, really. I don't know.
Anomalies basically have not even a speck of interest in human curiosity and counterarguments.
According to anomaly sensibility, such questions themselves are not 'sexy.'
To share an insight I've gained while living as a regressor for a long time... these bastards are basically no different from 'AI art.'
From the anomalies' perspective, our humanity's long history, common sense, and scholarship are nothing more than 'prompt input values.'
Just as AI art judges two-legged or three-legged humans as normal homo sapiens, the egalitarian anomalies make no racial discrimination between Chinese and Brazilians.
The concept of 'butterfly effect' that belonged to human scholarship in the past was also actively reinterpreted at the end of the century.
'An existence that causes storms at random without being fixed to the flow of causality!'
To put it forcibly, a tornado launcher.
Thanks to this, the 'butterfly effect' gained an identity like North Korean missiles. The categorical imperative that it shoots missiles whenever it's bored was certain, but where the missiles would fly changed according to its mood each time.
In the 30th iteration, it curved to the South Sea and submerged evacuation ships heading to Japan. In the 82nd iteration, it landed in the waters off Incheon and similarly poured water baptism on refugees.
Is that all? From the 83rd to the 85th iterations, it drifted toward Mongolia, India, and Siberia respectively.
A variety of breaking balls that would make a Major League scout fall in love and shove a contract forward.
In conclusion, cases where the tornado struck a strike into the Korean peninsula proper were actually rare. No wonder it was difficult for someone like me with 100% Korean origin marking to notice.
"...It's truly a dangerous existence."
Crunch. The Saintess crushed and ate a potato chip.
Surprisingly, the Saintess ate potato chips not from a bag but from a LocknLock plastic container. This meant she even portioned out snacks and stored them in the refrigerator, which proved the Saintess wasn't in her right mind either.
Additionally, she ate potato chips with chopsticks, not fingers. Does she truly have no human heart?
The hikikomori germaphobe Saintess said.
"It's called the butterfly effect in name only, but you're saying it's essentially an unpredictable variable and random number. If such an anomaly exists, wouldn't the biggest advantage of being a regressor fade away?"
"Exactly. The even bigger problem is that it's difficult to pinpoint this anomaly's location."
"Pardon?"
"Think about it, Saintess. The fact that the tornado flies in a different direction every iteration means the location where the tornado is launched might also be different. Anyway, Beijing is certain, but is Beijing somewhat vast?"
"Ah......"
Only then did the Saintess seem to understand and nodded.
"That's difficult indeed."
"Yes. If the anomaly were large like Cthulhu, that would be one thing, but seeing that it hasn't been caught in my information network so far, it's probably small in size. We have to find an anomaly whose location changes every iteration, somewhere within Beijing. It wouldn't be much different from looking for a scale in a desert."
"Indeed. You're right."
"Correct. It's nearly impossible for me to solve alone. If there weren't a genius ability user who can share the vision of all Awakened."
"......"
"......"
"......?"
"......"
"...I'll go with you. To Beijing."
"Oh my. There's no need to go that far. Sigh, if the Saintess helps me, it truly feels like gaining ten thousand horses."
"......"
Hikikomori Saintess's heart-pounding overseas business trip, confirmed!
An infinite regressor spinning tales.