Chapter 209

Chapter 209

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The Antagonist VI

A wild Outer God appeared!

The world (once again) was doomed! Everyone, run for your lives!

...Yet no one reacted that way.

Everyone remained calm.

People had already mentally sorted the hierarchy of anomalies into five neat categories: Ocean-class, Continent-class, Polis-class, Village-class, and below village-class. So even if I suddenly screamed, “Do you know what an Outer God is? It’s insanely strong! It can beat up even Ocean-class anomalies!” they’d probably just respond with, “Who cares, you nerd?”

And honestly, even those in the Regressor Alliance weren’t much different.

“Are Outer Gods really that powerful?” Ah-ryeon asked, panting heavily and drenched in sweat. She had just rushed over and healed Fairy No. 264.

“Why are Outer Gods the only ones called that? All the other anomalies are named after places—villages, cities. But Outer Gods sound... small. It feels wrong, out of balance.”

“Don’t be too hard on it, Sim Ah-ryeon.” Surprisingly, it was Do-hwa who chimed in to back me up. “You should never mock the naming sense of the most revered Duke of the Black Library, the Supreme Overlord of the Library Society. You never know when you’ll disappear without a trace...”

“H-holy crap! I’m sorry! I think the guild leader’s naming sense is perfect! It’s the best!”

“......”

Not so surprisingly, Do-hwa had been mocking me all along.

For the record, Noh Do-hwa was the kind of supporting character in a visual novel whose affection level was permanently locked at Lv. 0, regardless of who tried to win her over. But—and here’s the kicker—there was exactly one person she allowed to reach Lv. 1: Sim Ah-ryeon.

Why? Simple. Even if Do-hwa got her limbs shattered, Ah-ryeon could heal them instantly. It wasn’t about chemistry or personality compatibility, like some people might think. Nope. It was purely about her healing ability.

That’s right. To win over Noh Do-hwa, you didn’t need anything fancy. You just had to be the next Heo Jun.[1]

For the record, the affection level cap in this reality game is Lv. 100. If anyone figures out how to raise the remaining 99 levels, feel free to upload it to SG-Net.

“The Outer Gods aren’t called ‘gods’ because they’re gods of our world. They’re called Outer Gods because they alienate the world from humanity,” I explained.

“H-huh...?”

“They’re gods beyond the scope of our world. Karl Marx originally used a term like this—in English, the meaning can be interpreted as “alienation”, which connects with the word alien.[2] I came up with this name to evoke that sense of being... alien to us.”

“What does that even mean, you nerd?”

“......”

“Ack! As expected from the guild leader. Your baiting is the best thing in the world...”

Calm down. My sword is not meant to cut down humans. Even though Sim Ah-ryeon confuses me to the core, her DNA is still 99.97% similar to mine.

Now I understood why the world had fallen apart. If creatures this irrational were the pinnacle of life, no wonder anomalies could easily dominate us.

“Ah-ryeon,” I called firmly, “one of the reasons Outer Gods are terrifying is that their patterns evolve rapidly.”

“Evolve?”

“Exactly. For example, if you fail to hunt down a Meteor Shower, it’s not the end of the world. The pattern of ‘falling from the sky’ doesn’t change. You just gather your strength and try again. But an Outer God immediately compensates for any weaknesses.”

This was the reason I had struggled so much, twisting my body to the limit when I hunted down the Admin of the Infinite Metagame in the 267th round. You could throw as many light jabs or one-two punches as you wanted. They weren’t going to accumulate any damage against an Outer God.

You needed one clean hit. A single, precise strike to pierce the bloated belly of an Outer God.

That’s the most frustrating part.

My strategy of slowly accumulating data through countless cycles—every regressor’s signature method—was the exact opposite of how you had to deal with an Outer God.

“Let me give you a demonstration. Hey, Fairy No. 264, are you conscious?”

“Hoek... I almost took a one-way trip to the afterlife...” Fairy No. 264 wobbled as it answered, its body now even smaller after being sliced in half earlier.

“Call the other fairies. We’re entering the Inner World again. This time, Ah-ryeon and the others will come along.”

“Hoek... Understood...”

We—the Saintess, Noh Do-hwa, Sim Ah-ryeon, and I—entered the dream simultaneously. Once again, we made it to Seoul Station Plaza, the gateway to the Inner World.

“Um, Guild Leader.”

But this time, there was a transparent ‘glass’ barrier between us and the plaza, preventing us from entering.

“We can see it, but we can’t get in...!” Ah-ryeon knocked on the glass with her small fists.

It wasn’t just her either. The Saintess unleashed her full aura, trying to hack at it with a hand axe, but the “glass” didn’t even get scratched.

Meanwhile, the people in Seoul Station Plaza casually walked across the glass without a care. We were so close, just an arm’s length away, yet completely separated, unable to affect each other. It was like how the living and the dead couldn’t interfere with each other.

“See? The Outer God has blocked the passage.”

“Hoek.”

“Nut probably didn’t expect me to enter her domain through dreams.”

To explain it again, Nut, the Goddess of the Night, had created a domain that spanned both “this world” and the “afterlife.” She had the power to designate which was which, and that was why she designated Kim Joo-chul’s dream as the afterlife, calling it Valhalla. And she had taken it a step further, declaring our reality as hell.

For those living in hell, there was almost no way to interfere with the living—Nut’s domain.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

Almost.

“Still, there have been stories throughout history about people experiencing the afterlife in their dreams. Thanks to the Tutorial Fairies, we managed to find this ‘dream-entry route,’ but once the Outer God noticed the flaw, she blocked it.”

“Uh... Then how do we get back in?”

“I don’t know.”

I lightly tapped the glass separating the afterlife from the living world. It wasn’t just a simple knock. I infused my aura into the glass, creating a ripple. My black aura vibrated against the surface, but the glass didn’t budge.

This was the frustrating part about dealing with an Outer God. Brute force alone wouldn’t work.

Maybe it was simply because I lacked the strength.

“Anyway, I’ve named this Outer God ‘Nut.’”

“Nut...”

“She’s a goddess from Egyptian mythology. She governs the night sky, or in other words, the universe and the cycle of day and night.”

When Nut caused the world to collapse, the night sky always took on a disturbing, pulsing appearance.

The Milky Way would turn into veins, throbbing red and blue, or the sunset would drip down like blood.

“In Egyptian mythology, the night sky is the body of the goddess Nut. People back then didn’t see the night sky as a vast expanse of space.”

“They didn’t?”

“They thought of it as a transparent dome covering the sky.”

“Huh? How?”

“They believed stars weren’t floating spheres but holes in that dome. As the world breathed, the stars were its breath holes, and the starlight was the world’s breath shining through.”

“Wha...? Starlight as the world’s breath...”

“And so, the Pythagoreans, influenced by Egyptian mythology, claimed that as the stars moved, the ‘world’s breath’ rang out like music. It’s just that humans couldn’t hear the melody.”

“Whoa...”

This was why the inside of a pharaoh’s sarcophagus was often decorated with night skies. The sarcophagus itself was transformed into a miniature universe. In it, the stars were intricately carved because the “breath holes”—the star-shaped openings—were what allowed the pharaoh’s soul to pass through.

“Guild Leader! You suddenly seem super knowledgeable! You actually know more than just memorizing the names of Romance of the Three Kingdoms characters...!”

This brat... “Hey, you. I’ve always been an expert when it comes to anomalies. I didn’t just get here by accident. I studied my way to the top, you know.”

“Ah, here comes the lecture...”

“What did you say?”

“Gyaaah! No violence, please!” Tears welled in Ah-ryeon’s eyes from where her head was held in a lock. “S-so, how do we cross over to that side if the passage is blocked...?”

“Hmm. Since Egyptian mythology is the main reference here, I guess we’d have to become mummies to cross over.”

“Mummies?”

“Yeah. By the way, to become a mummy, you need to have your brain removed. Egyptians didn’t think the brain was important—they believed thinking happened through the heart.”

“H-huh?! You’re talking about dying!”

“How about you become a mummy on behalf of humanity, Ah-ryeon?”

“N-nooo! It’s not me who should get buried alive, it’s you, Guild Leader!”

Just then, the Saintess raised her hand. “Mr. Undertaker.”

“Yes? What is it?”

“If this Outer God, Nut, really has the power to designate which is the afterlife and which is the living world... and if she’s labeled our world as the afterlife, specifically a hell where souls suffer...”

The Saintess tilted her head, her watery blue hair swaying slightly.

“Wouldn’t more than just déjà vu be happening to people infected by the Regressor Virus? Wouldn’t... even worse things be happening? Real, hellish things?”

“......”

Ah.

We hurriedly returned to reality. And outside, hell had indeed broken loose.

“Aaaaargh!”

“I-I’ve been stabbed! I got stabbed!”

In Busan’s Guduk Mountain, trees were being replaced by swords that slashed at anyone who got too close. These “tree swords” weren’t just sprouting—they were growing and retracting in real time, like living creatures. They seemed to be spreading down from the mountain into other areas of the city, infecting other trees.

“Save me! Please, let me out of here!”

“O-ow, ow...!”

The ground beneath the protesters in Babel Tower Plaza had collapsed, turning into a massive pit of molten metal.

People flailed and screamed as they fell into the boiling liquid, their skin burning and melting. Strangely, though, their flesh regenerated almost immediately, causing them to drown and burn again and again in an endless loop of suffering.

This “molten pit” was also expanding, threatening to spread beyond Babel Tower Plaza into other districts.

“G-Guild Leader...!”

My comrades were gathered on the rooftop of the National Road Management Corps headquarters, staring at the unfolding chaos. They turned to me, their faces pale with shock.

“This is insane! We were only gone for a little while...!”

We’d only been away for a short while.

But in that time, the world had fallen into hell.

Footnotes:

[1] Heo Jun was royal chief physician of Naeuiwon during the reign of King Seonjo and King Gwanghae of the Joseon period in Korea.

[2] Alienation in the Marxist sense refers to the way people feel estranged from their humanity, like being made to feel like an animal or “other,” as a consequence of the division of labor and class in society.

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