Chapter 178

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The Diver X

Let’s have a brief chat about bugs.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

Insects.

The term for bugs and derision.

When you think about it, isn’t it quite odd? Throughout history, people have constructed a pyramid of life with plants at the bottom, animals in the middle, and humans at the top. The further down you go, the lower the level in the ecosystem. However, there’s never been a history of terms like “tree brat” or “such a seed” being used as insults. At most, “weed” might be a candidate, but even that word carries a hint of admiration for resilience.

If you’re skeptical, consider the difference between saying, “You’re as tenacious as a weed!” and, “You’re as tenacious as a cockroach!” The nuance changes significantly. The lowest form of life, reserved for the most despicable entities, has always been bugs. The long history of contempt and persecution against bugs is well-documented even in dictionaries.

A harmful creature? Yes, a pest.

A lazy bum who eats and shits? Yes, a parasite.

Indecisive and lacking a backbone? A spineless worm.

A psychopath like Yu Ji-won? An emotional leech on society.

A nymph following others’ words in the forest? A bug that echoes others.

Such a dazzling lineup of derogatory terms. Even the tiger was nicknamed ‘big bug’ (大蟲). This term was created when the emperor of the Tang Dynasty, whose name included the character for tiger (虎), ascended the throne, forcing the creation of a new term to avoid the emperor’s name taboo.

In essence, people of old simply appended “bug” to any beast with legs. It wasn’t that they lacked the biological know-how to differentiate between insects and mammals. They simply understood, as well as modern people, that adding “bug” to the end of a word was enough to express disdain.

The most despised existence. A life detested and scorned.

The easiest metaphor and symbol humans used to curse something was a “bug.” Therefore, it was the most basic magic. Anything or anyone could become a bug.

And with the arrival of anomalies, humankind fell to the level of bugs. Just as a dragonfly in graceful flight could be ensnared for a child’s summer homework only to have its wings torn off, a human walking by the river could lose their limbs and face, turning into a potato. The elegance of the dragonfly’s flight and the nobility of the human didn’t matter to the anomaly.

To regard something as an “insignificant existence,” it first had to be turned into a “bug.”

The magic of the anomaly using language was thorough, but anomalies also had a tendency to rush things. As Chairman Netero pointed out, enemies who sought to annihilate humanity always made the same mistake: underestimating the depth of human malice.[1]

Indeed. If the rule among anomalies was that when you gaze into the void, the void gazes back, then the human rule was when you treat someone like a bug, be prepared to be treated like a bug yourself.

-GRRRRAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!

Leviathan roared.

As the strongest of dragons, Leviathan’s body was invisible. It was the mightiest of dragons. However, what Leviathan faced now was not gods, demons, or the Balrogs, which couldn’t be used due to copyright laws.[2] They were mere extras destined to lose in any Kamen Rider tokusatsu show.[3]

The enemy of the anomaly—it was always humanity, the exterminators of Earth’s ecosystems.

-GRAAAAAHHH!

Leviathan’s roar, apart from rupturing the eardrums and corneas of some Awakeners, achieved nothing. For prominent Awakeners like Cheon Yo-hwa and myself, there was no damage at all.

The water bugs that had been rushing to bite off our limbs stopped and began to scream. The roar wasn’t coming from Leviathan’s mouth but was instead a cacophony emitted by the countless water bugs composing its body.

“Ugh, it’s so loud...!”

“Don’t stop! Keep reading The Metamorphosis, Yo-hwa! It’s working!”

“Okay, got it!”

“Saintess! Read it in the original German too!”

[Understood.]

“Yo-hwa, just mimic the Saintess’s pronunciation even if you don’t understand it!”

“Okay!”

The Saintess didn’t originally know German, but after years of study sessions with me, she mastered it. Reading Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason in German was a breeze for her; Kafka’s The Metamorphosis was nothing.[4]

She and Cheon Yo-hwa continued chanting the powerful ‘bug spell.’

-GRRRRAAAAAAAHHH!

The force holding the H₂O molecules and swarms of bugs together in the form of a dragon weakened rapidly, and Leviathan’s body began to disintegrate. Cheon Yo-hwa and I couldn’t quite wrap our minds around the situation under the aura-made eyelid barrier, but seeing the water bugs convulse, we knew we had found an effective strategy.

[Mr. Undertaker! It’s working!]

Plop.

Rain fell.

[The dragon’s scales are falling off!]

The rain wasn’t from the sky.

Dragon scales, flesh, organs, and cells—all the water bugs composing Leviathan were bursting, falling like rain.

- Croak.

- Croak, croak.

- Croak, croak, croak.

The water bugs croaked.

Frogs are heralds of rain, forecasting and summoning its presence. Thus, the frogs declared this rain was their domain and not an unexpected event. Yet even if their croaking drowned skulls and minds, they couldn’t stop the collapse already in motion.

- Croak.

Plop. Plop.

I looked up. A few drops of rain hit my cheeks.

As always, a light drizzle foreshadowed a downpour.

- Croak, croak.

Thud, thud, thud.

Countless bugs burst open.

Once a super typhoon reaching 10 kilometers in height and 1,200 kilometers in diameter, this anomaly and terror of East Asia spewed rain over Busan.

This rain was Leviathan’s hemorrhage, the sea dragon’s corpse.

‘We did it.’

There was no need to keep the aura blindfold on the anomaly. Even the dragon’s eyes were draining away, sinking into a whirlpool.

’We did it! We defeated the super monsoon with minimal casualties and found an effective strategy!’

I wasn’t the only one cheering. In fact, I was quite restrained in comparison.

“It’s falling! That bastard is falling!”

“Rescue the people in the sea! If they get caught in the rain, they’ll drown!”

“We did it! We won!”

The Samcheon World guild members circling on broomsticks, Baekhwa Girls’ High School guild members fighting on the dragon’s body, and Awakeners infusing aura from within the ark—they all exhaled in victory.

“Teacher!” Cheon Yo-hwa, now confident of our victory, hugged me, soaked in fatigue. “We survived!”

Despite joking about a double suicide, Cheon Yo-hwa’s relief and joy were palpable.

I gave her a few energetic pats on the back. “You did great! Thanks to you striking the eye of the storm, everything worked out!”

“Oh, oh, oh— Hehe. Yes!” Cheon Yo-hwa laughed gleefully as I patted her back. Even the orange strand of hair clinging to her cheek seemed endearing.

Thus, we entered the happy ending epilogue—

If only it were that simple. There’s still a scene I needed to describe before moving on. A scene I have never shared with anyone until now.

Everyone except me and the one who would later eavesdrop on this secret believed the super monsoon was defeated.

With Noah’s Ark, Ha-yul’s puppet strings, the Awakeners’ aura support, and Cheon Yo-hwa’s assistance; with the miracle of ‘Dragon’s Eye’ and Metamorphosis magic, orchestrated by me, the Undertaker; finally, by all appearances, we had defeated Leviathan.

But I saw it.

Step.

While being hugged by Cheon Yo-hwa, I witnessed a strange sight.

There where Leviathan fell into the sea, Go Yuri walked toward its splashdown.

No one noticed.

It was as if time had stopped, leaving everyone motionless.

“......”

I couldn’t even move my lips, let alone tell if this was a dream or reality.

Step. Step.

In the frozen world, with only my eyes as her witness, Go Yuri gracefully walked. She stepped on the water as if it were solid ground, and with each step, her lips moved softly.

“You shouldn’t do this.”

Her whisper seemed to resonate not from afar but right beside my ear, or maybe even inside my head.

But the whisper wasn’t directed at me.

Go Yuri smiled at Leviathan dissolving into raindrops. “Respect each other’s territories. That was our agreement, wasn’t it? At least, that’s how I understood it...”

Then something astonishing happened. In that frozen world, or rather in the air separated from reality, Leviathan responded.

-GWAAAAARRRGHHHH!

Leviathan answered not with human language but with the gestures of an anomaly. The scales that had been falling off suddenly sharpened again.

Blink. Blink.

Countless scales turned into ‘eyes.’

“......!”

I gasped without sound.

Leviathan’s body was no longer covered in beautiful, transparent scales. Like Argos from Greek mythology, its entire body, from head to tail, was now covered in eyes.[5] It was as if defeating the dragon by covering its eyes led it to produce hundreds, thousands, millions of eyes instead.

Indeed, bosses always had multiple transformation phases. The typhoon form was Phase 1. The sea dragon form was Phase 2. Now, the super monsoon anomaly was initiating Phase 3.

’Do we have to defeat it again?’

A profound dread gripped my consciousness.

Go Yuri, with a slightly troubled smile, closed one eye gently. “Really. You shouldn’t do this.” Those thousands of eyes watched her place a finger to her lips. “Shh. You failed the gamble. You couldn’t accept everyone. So, you must accept the result. Actually, there’s no reason to even call you ‘you’ anymore.”

-KIIIEEEEERGHHHHHHH!

“Be quiet.”

A strange sound echoed in this surreal world. It was like a beast’s growl, a tiger’s roar, and the innocent laughter of countless children mixed together, creating an eerie echo.

‘This...’

Déjà vu washed over me.

That cycle long ago. The cycle where I experimented by pairing Yu Ji-won and Go Yuri, leading to the disappearance of all Daejeon citizens.

It was the same sound I heard that night.

Go Yuri whispered.

“Become one.”

And Leviathan’s millions of eyes melted.

No embellishments were needed. Leviathan, revealing its true form for the final time, didn’t struggle. It melted away as if it had always been nothing more than droplets of water.

The melted eyes mixed with the falling rain and disappeared.

It was dead.

“......?”

Go Yuri turned toward me. When our eyes met, she widened her eyes in surprise. She began walking toward me, but then hesitated.

“......”

She looked down at her feet for a long time, and I sensed that she was somehow uncomfortable. After a moment, a fresh smile was painted across her lips. “Indeed. This too is a territory.”

What did she mean?

Go Yuri lifted the side of her long skirt with a light touch, bowing elegantly like a noble at a ball. “Please be at ease.”

“......”

“I won’t touch you.”

Drip, drip, drip.

As soon as Go Yuri finished speaking, the rain that had been suspended in the air poured down. The last rain of the super monsoon was so thick it obscured Go Yuri’s form as if it were veiled in fog.

The time that had been paused and overlaid with an illusion resumed its flow.

“―Wow!”

“It’s really dead!”

“We did it!”

The cheers of the Awakeners, momentarily halted, echoed over the sea off Busan. To them, Leviathan had never entered Phase 3. There were no thousands of eyes. The sea dragon simply turned into ordinary rain.

To them, no strange phenomena occurred in the in between.

“Long live Baekhwa Girls’ High School! Long live Cheon Yo-hwa!”

“Long live Dang Seo-rin!”

“Thank you, Constellations!”

“Undertaker! Undertaker! Undertaker!”

“......”

While everyone praised the heroes of the operation, I gazed silently at the fading rain.

The endless downpour finally subsided. The sea fog lifted. The sea dragon’s corpse had been buried in the water.

Go Yuri was nowhere to be seen.

“Saintess.”

[Yes.]

“Did you see anything just now?”

[What do you mean by ‘anything?’]

“...Nothing. You did a great job.” I patted the back of Cheon Yo-hwa, who was still clinging to me like a koala.

When the ark’s deck opened, people who had been confined for nearly ten days emerged. The cheers grew louder.

But the scent of apples lingered in my nostrils longer than the smell of the sea.

Super Monsoon Anomaly.

Aliases: Leviathan, Water Bugs, Sea Dragon, White Dragon, Frog Dragon, Frog Rain, Jörmungandr, Eye of the Storm, Argos.

Threat Level: Lv.4 Oceanic (Five Oceans)

Patterns: Phase 1 ‘Typhoon’, Phase 2 ‘Sea Dragon’, Phase 3 ‘Awakened Eyes’

Estimated Damage if Not Defeated: Submersion of Japanese Archipelago, Inundation of the Korean Peninsula, Flooding of the Chinese Continent.

Subjugation complete.

There’s an epilogue.

Having discovered an effective strategy to defeat the super monsoon, I prepared even more thoroughly for the next summer cycle.

“From now on, your name is Noah.”

“Is this for real...?”

Naturally, I renamed Noh Do-hwa as Noah in this cycle too.

The ark was fortified. This time, I didn’t need to free dive with Ha-yul into the typhoon; the ark fleet was securely bound with puppet strings from the start.

I made the Saintess and Cheon Yo-hwa memorize the original German text of The Metamorphosis.

The preparations were perfect.

‘This time, I’ll defeat it in a day! Come on, super monsoon!’

It didn’t come.

“......?”

No matter how long we waited, the super monsoon did not arrive, nor did even a regular monsoon. The sea off Busan remained peaceful, filled with the aria of seagulls.

“What?”

Everyone stared at me with narrowed eyes.

Noh Do-hwa, who had invested money and manpower to build the ark on Geumjeongsan, the passengers who boarded with solemn determination, and Cheon Yo-hwa, who struggled to memorize German—they all looked at me like the Korean Meteorological Administration. Their eyes reflected the crashing value of the regressor coin.

“Well... let’s wait a few more days?”

But it didn’t come.

“......”

“Hey, regressor. Do you wanna die...?”

Noh Do-hwa tore off the nameplate with “Noah” written on it and threw it at me. It hit me right in the heart.

‘No, this can’t be...’

But really, the super monsoon had vanished without a trace.

Even when I flew to the North Pacific, there were no signs of an anomaly forming. Not only in this cycle but in future cycles, the super monsoon never reappeared. Busan never faced another tsunami leading to reconstruction. It was inexplicable.

[Mr. Undertaker.]

But.

Instead, every summer, another presence appeared off the coast of Busan.

[The ‘pink entity’ you warned me about last time has appeared in Haeundae.]

“What?”

[Don’t worry. I didn’t use Clairvoyance on it. I’m observing it cautiously through another Awakener in Haeundae.]

Go Yuri.

Every monsoon season, she appeared in the sea off Busan.

“What is she doing there?”

[No unusual signs. She’s taking off her shoes, splashing in the water, and strolling alone on the beach.]

[Oh, now she’s squatting and playing in the sand.]

I frowned. “...Playing in the sand?”

[Yes. She’s singing the nursery rhyme ‘Froggie, Froggie, I’ll give you a new house’ and building sandcastles only to destroy them. She seems very happy.]

[What should we do, Mr. Undertaker? Leave her be? Or intervene using other Awakeners?]

I was silent for a long time. My neck still ached from Noh Do-hwa’s grip. “...No. Leave her alone.”

[Are you sure?]

“Yes. There’s no need to poke a sleeping tiger.”

According to the Saintess, Go Yuri spent about an hour at Haeundae before returning to Daejeon. After she left, I immediately visited Haeundae. I checked the exact spot where Go Yuri had played with the sand. On the delicate boundary between land and sea, where the waves barely reached, the wet sand had writing on it.

-Rawwwr!

What did it mean?

Maybe it was a prank she left, knowing I’d find it. I shook my head, puzzled.

Then, suddenly, I noticed something under the waves. There were ‘letters’ inscribed on the seabed.

虎.

The character for tiger.

“......”

Even if something had been written there, the waves should have washed away the sand long ago. Yet, for some reason, the seabed letters remained untouched by the waves. It wasn’t just a few letters by chance. Tiny characters stretched endlessly toward the horizon.

虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎虎

“......”

When I tried to open my mouth, a wave gently washed over the beach, and the letters that had covered the seabed disappeared.

-Rawwwr!

Only the playful scribble Go Yuri left at my feet remained.

“......”

Hmm.

...It was autumn.

Footnotes:

[1] A reference to this quote from Chairman Netero when facing the King Meruem of the Chimera Ants of HunterXHunter: “You know nothing of the bottomless malice within the human heart.”

[2] Invisible Dragon is a spoof web novel of the “so bad, it’s good” variety that features a roaring invisible dragon that is the mightiest of dragons, gods, demons, and Balrogs that infringe on the copyright of The Lord of the Rings series.

[3] Kamen Rider is a TV program in the tokusatsu genre, which features a wide plethora of special effects and, oftentimes, a large monstrous enemy such as Godzilla.

[4] Critique of Pure Reason is a philosophical text by Immanuel Kant that explores the application and limitations of metaphysics. Because understanding it requires a certain mastery of centuries of philosophy, it’s generally seen as inaccessible to most readers, even when read in one’s native language.

[5] Argos the many-eyed giant was used as an ever-vigilant, all-seeing watchdog for the queen of the gods, Hera, and was slain after being tricked into closing all of his eyes.

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