Chapter 207

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The Antagonist IV

No one panicked, not even in the face of the relentless assault of an anomaly that was set to be classified as an Outer God-class threat. Not just me but the entire Regressor Alliance, who now held the reins of power over the Korean Peninsula, stayed calm.

That much was to be expected, of course.

“Another virus?”

“The imagination of these damn anomalies is pathetic. All they seem to know is how to screw over humanity with pandemics...”

“So is this one stronger than COVID?”

Yeah, the Korean Peninsula had experienced far too much to freak out over yet another pandemic, let alone scream about the end of the world.

Through Constellation Talk and SG Net, we sent out an alert:

[A mysterious virus is currently spreading. Please act accordingly, as you’ve been trained.]

The citizens responded swiftly. Keeping distance, isolating in their districts, making schedules to avoid overlapping routes—everyone knew the drill.

But this Regressor Virus was something altogether new. It had the power to mock the defense protocols that Korea had painstakingly built over time.

“How are we supposed to prevent a virus that spreads through dreams...?”

Noh Do-hwa summarized the heart of the issue in one sentence.

“With diseases that spread in the real world, you can at least try to lock things down or destroy the source. But this... This thing spreads just because I showed up in the dream of someone you sealed away with Time Seal. Am I right?”

“We’ve dispatched the Tutorial Fairies to the infecteds' dreams.”

“And those ‘Hoek’ vending machines are supposed to stop the disease?”

“No. At best, they’ll just buy us some time.”

In short, the disease was uncontainable. No matter how composed the leadership of the Peninsula remained, the situation was escalating fast. Unless one had reached the extreme limit of Aura, it was impossible to avoid sleep for an extended period.

Everyone slept. And everyone who slept was infected through their dreams.

It had only been a single day, but SG Net was already in chaos.

- Anonymous: [Virus] I’m losing my mind; every time I close my eyes, I see the scenes of my death from previous rounds.

- Anonymous: [Virus] This world is just repeating itself, and this life is nothing but one of countless copies.

- Anonymous: [Virus] To those not infected yet, take note. Read this.

- Anonymous: [Virus] This place is hell.

The cries of the infected began to flood in.

I decided to meet with a few of them directly. The symptoms of the Regressor Virus turned out to be remarkably consistent.

“The world, it's repeating! I’m sure of it! Look! This conversation we’re having right now definitely happened before!”

Symptom #1: Intense déjà vu.

When mild, it manifested as a fleeting déjà vu. But as the infection worsened, the feeling grew stronger.

“Calm down. This is our first time meeting. Even if there were previous rounds, we’ve never had a conversation like this.”

“No, no! You just don’t realize it yet. That’s why you’re so calm, because you don’t know the truth—that the world is repeating!”

“......”

Who would’ve thought that one day, I’d get lectured about regression?

It sent a strange mix of novelty and awkwardness through me as I watched the infected person nervously chew his nails, his eyes losing focus.

“That expression of yours... Those eyes... I’ve seen it all before. It’s all pointless. We’re going to die again. We’ll repeat, over and over, living the same lives as if nothing ever happened... I don’t want to die. I don’t want to live either...”

“Hmm.”

Symptom #2: Extreme fear of regression.

Considering most people fantasize about becoming regressors and having an easy life, this symptom was perplexing. However, this symptom stemmed from the first.

If you were truly a regressor in a fictional world, you’d probably enjoy carving out a completely different path from your previous life. But the Regressor Virus was different. The most insidious part of this virus was that it made people feel like every single thought and action had already been repeated thousands, even tens of thousands of times.

No matter what they did, no matter how novel it seemed, they believed they had experienced it all before. Inevitably, no matter what choices they made, they were overwhelmed by an inescapable déjà vu.

In other words...

“It might be more accurate to call this the Déjà Vu Virus rather than the Regressor Virus.”

Above all, this virus didn’t cause people to truly recognize they were regressing, like I did. Some patients even pointed at me during our interview and said:

“Undertaker? Weren’t you a woman?”

“Pardon?”

“Why are you a man this time? Ah, right. There were rounds where you were a man, too.”

What utter nonsense.

This was Symptom #3 of the virus.

It didn’t actually cause real regression but merely implanted in the infected the false belief that they had been regressing repeatedly. Even when I interrogated them about specific events from past cycles, their answers were vague at best. When questioned about the future, they rambled incoherently.

Yet even if it was just a delusion, we couldn’t afford to let our guard down.

When I finished the interviews and stepped outside, Do-hwa was leaning against the wall, watching me.

“Today alone, 136 suicide cases have been confirmed. There’s probably a lot more we haven’t found yet...” she trailed off.

“......”

“Those infected by the virus fall into one of two categories: They either become highly violent or sink into severe apathy. The former kills others, while the latter kills themselves. What kind of shit disease is this...?”

Do-hwa tugged on one of her gloves, the black leather creaking as it stretched over her hand. Under the dim light, the five long fingers there clenched tight.

“So, what are you going to do about this...?”

There were two layers to Do-hwa’s question. One was the literal meaning.

What are you going to do about the situation?

No matter how elusive the Tutorial Fairies were, they couldn't control the dreams of all infected persons. With three million survivors left in Korea, it wouldn’t be long before the symptoms worsened for everyone.

The second meaning was unspoken.

Are you going to abandon this round?

Right now, the members of the Regressor Alliance were experiencing relatively mild symptoms, but that could change rapidly in a few days. Soon, I might witness the people I cared about either killing others or taking their own lives.

And if I didn’t want to see that, she could kill me herself. Just like she had done in certain rounds I had never mentioned before.

“We must not surrender.”

But this time, I wouldn’t.

“This anomaly is not something we can overcome just by resetting to a new round. In fact, doing so will probably make things worse.”

“Worse?”

“The host of this pandemic isn’t something that appeared in this cycle alone. It’s the dreams of those I erased with my Time Seal, and the Seal is immune to the round resets. No matter how many rounds I go through, the Crystal Tombstones I sealed are still there.”

Do-hwa’s eyes widened slightly. “So, even if you regress, the virus remains trapped in those tombstones...?”

I nodded. “Yes, that’s my theory. In fact, it’s possible the Regressor Virus didn’t just pop up this round. It might have been accumulating ever since the tombstones were created—since the 4th round. It could have transformed over time and only now exploded in this round.”

“What round are we on now?”

“The 267th.”

“...Fuck.”

Exactly.

If my theory was correct, the virus had managed to find the only truly safe zone in this world of repeated cycles: inside the Time Seal. A place that even a regressor like me couldn’t alter—a point of no return.

Just like how the anomaly known as Go Yuri had embedded itself deep in my unconscious, the virus too had built its final stronghold, resisting my regressions.

“What’s the point of being a regressor if regression is useless? What do you have left, besides that face of yours and your dead-fish eyes...?”

“I make great coffee.”

“Who needs that...?”

“I can offer the honor, wealth, and power of Korea to a retired 7th-grade civil servant, like yourself.”

“Fuck, no thanks...”

“I can mediate when Dang Seo-rin and Cheon Yo-hwa fight. Not just anyone can do that.”

“If you weren’t around, they wouldn’t even be fighting, you asshole...”

“Hoek!”

The barrage of insults from Noh Do-hwa was interrupted by a most unexpected source—the Tutorial Fairy. With a pop, fairy number 264 appeared out of nowhere, waving its wand dramatically.

“Comrade Secretary! Emergency! A crisis has arrived!”

“What's up? Did we run out of Jinju sausages?”[1]

“It’s not as terrifying as that, but still an emergency...!”

I tossed the sausage-loving fairy a pack of the aforementioned sausages. Fairy No. 264 smiled in bliss, chomping down without even peeling off the wrapper. Keeping these Tutorial Fairies loyal required constant, subtle gestures like this.

“Hoek! While we were monitoring the dreams of the infected as per your command, we made a shocking discovery!”

“What is it?”

“Seeing is believing! Site inspections are a core duty of a communist secretary! Come with me!”

The fairy was likely referring to either the Tutorial Dungeons or a dream. Since the Tutorial Dungeons in Korea had long been closed, it was obviously going to be the dream of an infected person—in this case, the dreamscape of the former football player, Kim Joo-chul.

“Under your strict orders, we’ve been keeping a close eye on this man’s dreams!” The fairy fluttered around as we entered the dream.

When I arrived, it was quiet. Earlier, the entire place had been overrun with rioters, wreaking havoc, but now, all was calm. Even the stadium was intact.

Every spectator and player had collapsed, drifting off into sleep, their heads surrounded by ZZZ bubbles. It was the power of a Baku—a dream eater.[2]

“To prevent further spread, we devised this method: First, we put all the residents of this dreamworld to sleep, then entered their dreams to put them to sleep again. Then we entered the dreams within the dreams to put them to sleep yet again!”

“...Sounds like a way to access the unconscious mind.”

“Hoek! Exactly! As expected of Comrade Secretary!” The fairy zoomed about excitedly. “When you trap ordinary humans in dream after dream like this, the dream eventually becomes so distorted that it’s no longer recognizable as a dream. The virus’s space to operate melts away like candle wax! That’s how we’ve been containing the spread!”

Ah, by the way, we could have left the Tutorial Fairies within the Time Seal completely unattended. If humans were left unattended like that, they’d disappear forever, but somehow, the Tutorial Fairies could enter and exit freely as long as I gave them permission.

When I asked how that was possible, they simply said, “Hoek! You call it a cemetery, but for us, it feels no different from a dream!”

Fairy logic was truly mysterious.

“But Comrade Secretary, please come here and check out Kim Joo-chul's dream!”

So I entered.

There, in the middle of the football field, Kim Joo-chul lay sleeping soundly. Taking the fairy’s hand (after hearing yet another strange lullaby), I entered his dream within the dream.

Did you watch the Olympic game yesterday?

Everyone! Believe in the Goddess! Believe, and you’ll live in heaven!

Honk! Honk!

Dad! I told you not to bring up politics!

The place was swarming with people.

I had been away from this sort of scene for so long that I’d almost forgotten what it was like, but after reflecting on it for a moment, I realized it was... Seoul Station.

“Where... is this?”

People walked around, using smartphones. Cars honked on the road. College students climbed the steps of the station. This must have been what human life looked like before the world ended—a fleeting glimpse of what used to be.

“Is this... really Kim Joo-chul’s dream?”

I wasn’t looking down on him. As the fairy had explained before we entered, the unconscious mind couldn't create a world this detailed and rational. Even with my Complete Memory, my own unconscious dreamscape had placed a vast desert just outside of Busan Station.

But what about this place?

It didn’t seem like a simple product of Kim Joo-chul’s unconscious. The acrid smell of exhaust wafting from the asphalt road was so vivid, so real. As real as reality itself.

No.

Exactly the same as reality.

“Hoek! Defining whether this is a dream is tricky, but we’ve decided to call it an Inner World! What’s certain is...”

“What?”

“The Inner World spans as far as the Korean Peninsula and continues to expand in real-time! With a little more effort, it might even surpass reality!” the fairy declared. “And it’s not just in Kim Joo-chul either! Anyone infected with the virus—anyone at all—gets linked to this place!”

“...What?”

“Every single person infected in the real world has been abducted to this Inner World!”

Footnotes:

[1] A type of Korean snack sausage, like beef jerky.

[2] Baku are dream-devouring yokai from Japanese folklore that are said to consume nightmares. A person plagued by bad dreams can call out to a baku for protection, but if the creature is hungry after its meal, it may also devourer said person’s hopes and dreams.

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