I'm an Infinite Regressor, But I've Got Stories to Tell-Chapter 328

Editor: echo

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◈ I’m an Infinite Regressor, But I’ve Got Stories to Tell

Chapter 328

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The Skeptic XXI

“Mr. Matiz, you can just follow me from here on out. I’ve stockpiled plenty of supplies for the apocalypse.”

“Mm.”

“I’ve also marked potential hideouts in various parts of the country. Oh, by the way, my skill is a sort of mapping ability that lets me see people’s locations, but it has some unique requirements, so I traveled all over the country right before the transportation infrastructure collapsed.”

“I see...”

“I’ve also spent years honing my hand-to-hand combat skills to a decent level in three different self-defense styles. In short, I can be the one carrying you this time, Mr. Matiz.”

“Uh, Ji-won.”

“Yes?”

“I appreciate how hard you’ve worked to prepare for this apocalypse, but... most of what you’ve done might not be all that necessary.”

“Pardon?”

“Like I said earlier, I’m a regressor.”

“That term rings a bell. I’ve heard you say strange things before, and guessed as much. But what exactly does ‘regressor’ mean?”

“Well, a regressor is—”

(Some details have been omitted.)

“So to put it simply, Mr. Matiz, you already know countless ways to secure supplies, you have ideal hideouts chosen, and you’ve cultivated combat strength that’s basically the most humanity could possibly hope to achieve?”

“Yes.”

“Which also means that the resources I’ve spent seven years gathering, along with all those locations I scouted, don’t mean very much?”

“Uh... Not exactly...”

“Between you and me, there’s no need for polite phrasing. What you’re implying is that, even if it’s not totally meaningless, it was pretty much a waste of time.”

“...Yes.”

“Hmm.” Ji-won nodded. “All right. I understand.”

There was an awkward silence.

“Ji-won?”

“Yes, dear regressor.”

“...Are you upset?”

“How could I be? ‘Being upset’ usually means you feel someone didn’t show you enough consideration or respect. How could I possibly say I haven’t been shown overflowing amounts of consideration and respect by you, my regressor?”

Her face was perfectly blank.

“If you hadn’t warned me of the apocalypse in advance, I might’ve been swept up in society’s collapse, facing all kinds of hardships.”

“Oh, right. Exactly.”

“Indeed. Though if you knew the world would collapse, it might have been even more helpful had you told me to just train my combat ability instead of gathering resources to the point my tailbone nearly fell off. A small question arises as to why you didn’t offer that little bit of advice... but it’s just a minor curiosity.”

“...”

“...”

“...”

“What are you doing, Lord Regressor? Since the stockpiles I’ve saved here at this convenience store amount to little more than a firefly before the full moon or a matchstick before a forest fire, you can disregard them and move along to the next stage of your plan, right?”

“...”

“Oh, by the way, I also found a car similar to the old Matiz we used to drive. But I guess it’s useless, so I’ll leave it here. And this hand-ax I’ve been using, I’ll return it to you. Its blade is a bit dull now, so I doubt it’ll be of much use. Anyway...”

“...”

“Shall we get going?”

Breaking news:

The psychopath is sulking.

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Editor: echo

https://dsc.gg/reapercomics

Vroooooom.

“Wow, these potato chips are so good! It’s been ages since I’ve had any. Once I started hitting the gym, I pretty much quit junk food. But now, thanks to you, Ji-won, I can stuff myself with chips. Feels like such a luxury!”

“...”

“Oh, and look, digestive biscuits with chocolate! They’re my favorite cookies! I can’t believe you stocked up on them. Even as a little kid, you always were scarily good at planning!”

“...”

“Wow, you even grabbed some high-end whiskey! Plus cocktail ingredients! Ji-won, have you tried drinking yet? If you haven’t had anyone teach you how to serve drinks, we could do a little—”

“Please. You’re being too loud. I need to concentrate on driving.”

“Right.”

Ji-won was driving the Matiz with impressive skill. At this point in time, the main roads hadn’t collapsed yet, so she skillfully picked roads that were still intact and sped along them.

Clearly, she’d done her homework in advance. It was an impressive level of preparedness.

Back when I approached her only as the “Undertaker,” she never gave me a ride in this little Matiz or anything like that. Most likely, she’d arranged all this as a kind of event for when she reunited with “Mr. Matiz” so that she’d show off her competence and readiness.

The Yu Ji-won. The silver-haired National Road Management Corps operative, a team leader, had gone so far as to prepare an entire apocalypse “event” for someone...

It was hard to wrap my head around. If the person in the driver’s seat turned out to be not Yu Ji-won but some “Yu Ji-won Anomaly,” I might even have nodded along like that made more sense.

There was something else odd too.

Pitter, patter.

Light rain fell outside the window. In every cycle before this, it had never rained at this time or place.

The route had changed.

My life as a regressor was nearly identical each time. From the perspective of a reader following my “story”, currently around the 328th chapter, it might feel fresh and new every day. But from my vantage point, it’s been tens of thousands of years. And the story has only advanced 328 times.

The unspoken hours. In a game, it would be that part labeled: [You’ve already read this. Skip?] That’s what consumed the vast bulk of my existence as the Undertaker.

And yet, once I met the 14-year-old summer girl as “Mr. Matiz” rather than the “Undertaker,” it suddenly started raining in a location and time it never had before.

Saintess.

Avoiding Ji-won’s gaze, I scribbled a note on my right thigh with my finger.

[Yes, I’m listening.]

Please check the Awakener’s vantage points who are not too far from the road we’re on. Say, a radius of about 10 km. Let me know what they’re seeing.

[Understood. I see 16 individuals so far.]

Currently, we were in the early days of the 777th cycle. I had only formed a blood pact with the Saintess a few days earlier, so she was still a newbie at apocalypse life and was also new to the way we secretly communicated via writing. She was probably using Time Stop for a second or two whenever she noticed my script, carefully deciphering the letters. Thus, I slowed my writing to spare the newbie from being overwhelmed.

Is it raining where you are?

A short pause.

[No. I’ve checked all directions out to five kilometers, and there’s no rain. But...]

But?

[I can’t be certain, but it looks like the path you and Yu Ji-won are driving along is the only area where it’s raining. Wherever you go, it rains in that exact place, following the road. Just behind you, around the convenience store you visited, there’s rainfall, but a little farther away it’s sunny—like magic.]

Rain along the roads.

Not rain from clouds, but rain that was Leviathan itself. It was following the path of it Miko and apostle, Yu Ji-won.

From a satellite’s perspective, as we snaked around different highways, Leviathan’s shadow would look like a giant dragon...

Or a huge centipede-like insect creeping behind us.

Rumble... Whoooosh!

Rain pelted the windows, and a faint roar, somewhere between the sound of rushing water and a dragon’s cry, resounded in the distance.

“Mr. Matiz.”

“Uh— Yes?”

“Haven’t you noticed that something’s changed?”

My mind went blank.

Her words were the classic, “I’m upset, and I’m about to double down on being upset. Consider this your warning.”

I gulped. Forcing a serious expression, I ventured a guess.

“Well, you’ve changed in lots of ways. Your hair is lovely. You’ve always been smart, but now you’re downright reliable, Ji-won...”

“Hmph.” She stared at me for a moment. “It seems your eyesight has severely deteriorated, Mr. Matiz.”

“Huh...?”

“Look at me more closely... You still don’t see it?”

If only I had Time Stop...

I had plenty of time in general, as a regressor, yet ironically had no time to figure this out calmly, like a student facing the last five minutes of a final exam.

Sweating bullets, I examined her carefully—like filling in testing bubbles, but with my eyes.

‘But she looks exactly like she does in every other cycle!’

Silver hair. Slightly arched brows. Eyes so pale they were almost transparent, a mix of purple and faint blue. A steady, expressionless gaze in my direction.

Wait... A gaze?

Yes. Even though Ji-won was in the driver’s seat, she had turned completely to watch me, as if steering the car purely with her peripheral vision.

“Did you finally notice?”

On closer inspection: She was only pretending to grip the steering wheel. In fact, her palms were not actually touching it. Instead, a stream of energy from her palms, her Aura, extended to the wheel, steering in her place.

“How...? How do you already have such advanced Aura control?”

“Aura? Hmm. An English-style pronunciation of ‘Aura’? That’s what you call ‘this’? So that’s news to me.”

Ji-won withdrew her hands entirely, yet even then, the faintly bluish Aura trailing from her fingertips remained. Far from dissipating, it snaked around the steering wheel even more freely, controlling it effortlessly.

My eyes and mouth fell open in shock.

This content is taken from fгee𝑤ebɳoveɭ.cøm.

“That’s impossible. At this point in time, you shouldn’t have such mastery of Aura. Aura normally requires absurd amounts of training.”

“Does it?” she asked with a calm tilt of her head. “Yet I can do it. I used to call it prāṇa,[1] but I like the word ‘Aura’ better. At some point, I realized I could move it however I wanted.”

In truth, Ji-won had always been an absolute genius in Aura. In any given cycle, she was the undisputed #2 in Aura usage, second only to me—save for the times when Ha-yul might rarely surpass her.

What if...?

A terrifying hypothesis flashed through my mind: What if she had intentionally hid her true prowess with Aura all this time?

Pieces of a puzzle began clicking together at high speed.

She managed to keep her entire “Mr. Matiz” objective a secret from everyone for thousands of years. Feigning weaker power to blend in? That would’ve been child’s play.

Just weak enough to pass muster... That standard would be slightly below the regressor, who was assumed to be the absolute best with Aura. Then there was Ha-yul, who was like an adopted daughter to that regressor. If Yu Ji-won realized the significance of Ha-yul, she’d adjust her skill so they’d appear to be competing for second place, occasionally letting Ha-yul gain an edge.

Yes... That lined up perfectly. Like a jigsaw puzzle morphing into 3D construction, logic built itself into a complex shape in my head.

Could it have started all the way back then?

I recalled an ancient era, buried like a fossil in my memory.

The 42nd cycle. Back then, the Meteor Shower Anomaly was the de facto final boss that threatened to destroy the world, in what now felt like a comedic misunderstanding. I had become the first to defeat it.

But how exactly did we beat it?

Meteor Shower brought ashen destruction wherever it fell, lulling people into a dreamlike sleep so they’d die painlessly. And the method we used to conquer it was mirrors.

Yes. We teamed up with Dang Seo-rin to develop a “reflection” spell. Then a 700-person strike force flew into the sky to challenge Meteor Shower.

“Team 12, final charge complete!”

“Team 11, fully charged!”

“Team 6, good to go! No major losses so far!”

“Team 4, minimal energy leakage, about 3%! Within expected range. Passing it forward!”

“Team 3, got it!”

We had arranged ourselves in 12 units. Each group faced a large mirror to which they funneled their combined powers using...

Aura.

“Team 2, done! Barely made it!”

“Keep going, keep going!”

“Team 1 is fully charged!”

And the leader of Team 1, naturally...

“Undertaker, Your Excellency!”

...was the one we all believed to be second only to me in using Aura, my one-time adjutant.

“Undertaker, Your Excellency! Now! We’ve transferred the energy!”

“Less than 1% loss!”

Yu Ji-won.

“Mr. Matiz,” she said, interrupting my revelation. “Earlier, when you told me you were a regressor, you also said something about a great monster called Leviathan. That it is infrastructure itself, a national entity, and my deity... That it grew in power with each cycle, correct? However, there’s a simpler, more direct measure of that.”

I used to think “Aura” was merely a typical Awakened power. It was something you’d see all the time in stories, so surely it was no big surprise in a world flooded with Anomalies. But if it were truly that common, then why wasn’t it sealed away when we defeated the Admin of Infinite Metagame, an Outer God from so many fictional tropes? If it was purely some made-up or “fantasy” power, one might assume it would vanish along with the illusions.

But it didn’t. Which suggests...

The power that fights Anomalies might itself be an Anomaly. What we called Aura wasn’t strictly a human privilege.

“Allow me to ask one thing... Across hundreds of cycles, hasn’t your ‘Aura’ grown stronger right along with you? Did you, by any chance, create your own so-called ‘Aura training method’ and spread it to other Awakeners?

I didn’t respond.

“If so...”

Her light-blue eyes, like a mirror for humanity, fixed on me.

“That means I’m not Leviathan’s only follower.”

Rain fell.

“That would make you, Mr. Matiz, and every Awakener who wields Aura complicit in empowering Leviathan.”

In other words, Yu Ji-won was not only the Miko of Leviathan, the monstrous rain entity.

She was also the apostle of Aura itself.

Footnotes:

[1] Prāṇa is a Sanskrit word that has a number of interpretations in English, including "life force," "energy" and "vital principle." The term is used in Hindu and yogic philosophy to refer to all the manifest energy in the universe, present in both living beings and inanimate objects.