Chapter 213

Chapter 213

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The Antagonist X

Everyone must have imagined it at least once as a child.

‘What if the entire world stopped, but I could still move around freely? Wouldn’t that be awesome?’

To Homo sapiens, the desire to take advantage of such situations is practically instinctual. Who hasn’t fantasized about robbing a bank and becoming a billionaire while time is frozen?

That daydream from my childhood adolescence had, after several thousand years, become reality.

"It really does seem like civilization is intact. Oh, there's a Starbucks... Right, that green logo was what it looked like."

"Indeed."

The Saintess and I strolled casually through the colorless world of Outer God's domain, taking in all the sights tinted in shades of black and gray.

"After the Void’s arrival, every brand became corrupted by Cthulhu symbols, so I'd forgotten what the original logos looked like. That was once a mermaid’s figure."

"...And there are so many people. It's really crowded."

"This is before the population density of the Korean Peninsula dropped to a twentieth of what it once was."

"How is it that, in the middle of the day, these people are all sitting in cafés and restaurants instead of working?"

"Hmm. Perhaps they’re working from their laptops?"

"Ah. So electronic devices haven’t been corrupted by the anomalies yet."

I suppose anyone would feel at least a hint of it, but the Saintess and I lived in a world detached from civilization.

As a regressor, I had been permanently severed from my memories prior to the fourth cycle.

As for the Saintess, she had lived alone for thousands of years, forgetting much in the process.

And yet.

“By the way, it’s amazing that you haven’t forgotten me, Saintess. How did you manage to keep your memories of me for 2,000 years?”

A strange little twitch tugged at her lips. It was hard to tell if she wanted to smile or hold back her words. “...That’s a secret. But Mr. Undertaker, why don’t we take a look inside that café?”

“I don’t mind... but just be careful not to eat anything. You remember the myth of Persephone, right? If you consume food from another world, you won’t be able to return to reality.”

“Yes, I’ll be mindful.”

We spent some time exploring the area around Seoul Station.

We entered a café, placed coffee cups on the table (though we didn’t drink), sat side by side and pretended to take pictures with a smartphone (nothing showed up in the photos), and went to a bookstore to flip through various books...

‘Come to think of it.’

There were a few moments when our hands slipped apart, causing me to freeze as time stopped again, but most of the time, we walked hand in hand.

‘I’ve never spent this much time outside with the Saintess before.’

I had once gone to Beijing with her to hunt down the Butterfly Effect, but that was mostly spent walking along dark subway tracks.

‘I wonder... is there no way to bring the Saintess into the next cycle?’

That thought—or perhaps that emotion—unexpectedly arose within me.

‘This person has withstood thousands of years alone to prevent the world from collapsing. Surely, we have much in common.’

Though I had never revealed it, I too had long craved the warmth of a companion, someone who could endure the endless days and nights on the isolated island of time with me. This 267th cycle's Saintess, who was holding my hand right now... seemed more like a true comrade to a regressor than anyone I had ever known.

‘Yes. That’s right.’

One of us was a time traveler, the other a time stopper. One imprisoned by the eternal flow of time, the other confined to its eternal stillness.

No one could understand—or even perceive—either of us. But we could understand each other better than anyone else.

That one of us was an Outer God-level anomaly didn’t matter in the slightest. If it came to that, I wouldn’t mind humanity revering the Saintess as a new deity.

‘But is there no way to break through the cycles...? Ah. Wait. What if I became the Saintess's Miko, her priestess?’

A brilliant idea.

Since we were both Awakeners with time-related powers, there might be a way to forge an Outer God-priestess relationship. Then, we could stay together.

There was hope. And when it came to clinging to hope, no one on Earth was more of an expert than me.

“Mr. Undertaker.”

“......”

“Mr. Undertaker.”

A cool hand, about 15°C, touched my cheek.

Before I knew it, the Saintess had placed her palm against my face.

“...Ah, my apologies,” I said. “I was lost in thought for a moment. What is it?”

“I think it’s about time we dealt with Nut.”

“Hmm.”

She was right. No matter how long we spent wandering through Nut’s realm, teasing the anomaly, Outer Gods remained Outer Gods. The moment we let our guard down, they might launch a counterattack from an unexpected angle.

Reluctantly, I nodded. “You’re right. Let’s finish this quickly.”

“Yes. But Nut is up there, in the sky, like the sun. What’s your plan for taking her down?”

“It’s simple. We’ll just walk up there.”

Shwip.

I manipulated my aura, creating a series of ‘platforms’ in the air. As the platforms stretched out in a domino-like sequence, a staircase appeared, leading directly into the sky.

It was a literal path to heaven.

The Saintess mumbled next to me, “...The way you hunt anomalies seems to rely a lot on brute force.”

“Well, what good is Aura if not for this? I didn’t train this hard just to show off. Let’s go.”

“Let’s.”

We both placed our feet on the translucent steps at the same time.

Ten meters, twenty meters. As we ascended, the lower platforms disappeared, while new ones formed above us.

Occasionally, the steps took on a dark hue when formed by my aura, and other times, they shimmered with the Saintess's translucent energy.

How long had we been climbing?

In a world where time had stopped, the concept of “how long” was meaningless. When I looked down, the ground seemed impossibly far below.

“Aha,” I chuckled, causing the Saintess to tilt her head.

“What is it?”

“Nothing. I just realized I’m becoming more like you, Saintess.”

“...?”

“You mentioned before that you see everything from an omniscient viewpoint. Look—now I can see all of Seoul, the entire Korean Peninsula, spread out beneath me. I’ve finally reached your level.”

“......”

The Saintess, still not used to seeing the world from a first-person perspective, looked at me from an angle. In response, her grip on my hand tightened slightly.

“Yes, Mr. Undertaker.”

We continued climbing.

Fortunately—or unfortunately—we didn’t have to travel all the way to space, 150 million kilometers, to reach the spot where the sun usually hung. Nut’s ‘eye’, which had replaced the sun, was shockingly close, located in the stratosphere.

“...I see.”

Shwip.

I reached out and touched the sky.

The atmosphere was covered by a transparent glass-like barrier, and embedded in it was Nut’s eye.

“The universe is gone. Only the sky remains.”

“The constellations are etched into the glass. Should we break it?”

“No. If we break through this layer, there will probably be more layers beyond it. The glass is likely wrapped around the Earth in several layers.”

Geocentrism: the ancient belief that the Earth was the center of the universe and all other stars revolved around it.

Nut, the Goddess of the Night, had brought this theory to life here. The same phenomenon was likely occurring in the real world, where Nut had begun corrupting reality. By turning all the empty space where humans couldn’t live into nothingness, Nut had left the Earth as the only place for life to exist.[1]

It was the kind of violence befitting an Outer God.

“Heh,” I scoffed. “If it weren’t for you, Saintess, the entire world would have been swallowed by Nut.”

“......”

“Now, I’ll pierce Nut’s eye.”

Without hesitation, I drew my cane-sword Do-hwa and stabbed it into Nut’s ‘eye’, this world’s ‘sun’.

The sun split in two.

Nut, the Outer God, offered no resistance.

Since time was frozen, Nut couldn’t even scream in its death throes. When time resumed, the anomaly would be completely vanquished.

“It’s done. Saintess, please unfreeze time now, and let’s return to reality. I need to consult with you... about a way to break free from the cycles...”

There was no response.

“Saintess?”

I turned to look at her.

The Saintess stood still, eyes closed. Her expression was as serene and unreadable as always, her hand still clasping mine.

But.

“......”

Bright red blood.

In the colorless world, a crimson lotus bloomed inexplicably from the center of the Saintess’s chest.

My body froze.

The blood drained from my face as my mind began to race, spinning so fast my ears buzzed with the sound of it.

This couldn’t be happening.

Had the Outer God somehow counterattacked? Did it have a system in place to curse its killer upon death? But if that were the case, why had the blow struck the Saintess, not me—the one who had pierced Nut’s eye...?

“I’m sorry, Mr. Undertaker.”

In the midst of my chaotic thoughts, the Saintess’s calm voice reached me like a single thread of clarity.

“There was one secret I hadn’t told you.”

Even with the crimson flower of blood blooming in her chest, there was no pain in her voice.

Only regret. Apology.

The kind of subtle emotion that only I, who understood her faint expressions, could perceive.

Her ocean-like voice spoke.

“I am Nut’s apostle.”

Time seemed to stop.

In the blink of an eye, the Aura stairs I had been standing on disappeared.

“...!”

My body lost balance, and I began to fall. Just as I was about to plummet from the stratosphere, time froze again.

The Saintess, kneeling on the steps above me, grasped my hand tightly. It was as if she were holding me at the edge of a cliff, preventing me from falling.

“Saintess! What is this...?!”

“Please, don’t move.”

The Saintess spoke softly.

“Don’t activate your aura. Don’t create new steps. Don’t take any action toward me.”

Blood was still flowing from her chest.

If Nut’s eye and the Saintess’s heart were connected, the wound must have been identical to the one I had inflicted on the Outer God.

“If you even show the slightest sign of movement, I’ll let go of your hand and freeze time.”

...

“You once said that Nut and I were opposites, didn’t you? Nut creates the underworld, while I freeze time, making us fundamentally different. But you were wrong.”

Drip.

Blood beaded from her chest, sliding down her clothes, and fell onto my cheek. It was where her palm had rested moments ago.

“That’s not the important part. What matters is whether one sees the world of the living as ‘hell’.”

“......”

“You know it, don’t you? I’ve been calling this world hell for a long time.”

A flash of insight.

“This world is hell.”

It was the 117th cycle.

The words the Saintess had spoken to me from within Infernal Hell flashed through my mind.

The world is hell, yet no one takes responsibility for it.

If time can’t be turned forward, then it must be stopped.

What reason could there possibly be for me to allow time to continue in a world like this?

Hell is said to be 20,000 yojanas below the surface. But that’s impossible.

Just one layer below the surface of that planet... it’s all hell.

Ah.

Even back then. Yes, even then.

The Saintess had been in space. She had spoken to me from the moon, the symbol of the ‘otherworld’.

Seeing the world as hell.

Having control over the universe.

Having the ‘eye’ to see the world from above, from an omniscient perspective.

Being capable of confronting and ambushing a regressor, the ‘master of time.’

The answer was yes.

In those four ways, the Saintess and Nut shared the same traits.

If an Outer God could establish a sanctuary within the grave of Time Seal, isolated from the world...

If an awakener could freely move in a world where time was frozen...

It was only natural to assume that they were connected on some fundamental level.

“You probably thought I trained my Aura for 2,000 years to reach the level of an Outer God, but you were mistaken.”

“Mistaken... how?”

“I’m sure I’ve spent hundreds, maybe even thousands of years in other cycles. Always observing people in frozen time. But the reason I became so much stronger in this cycle is because Nut’s power has grown stronger.”

“......”

“I am Nut’s incarnation.”

Drip.

Another drop of blood slid down my cheek and fell into the abyss below.

“You can’t kill Nut without killing me as well.”

“Wait! We can seal the Outer God separately!” I shouted desperately. “Yo-hwa, the Baekwha High student council president, was the same! The Outer God called Infernal Void was sealed within her!”

The Saintess shook her head. “We aren’t compatible enough, not in that way. Infernal Void was so unaware of the cycles that it couldn’t even notice them. But Nut is different. Nut is the Outer God of time, the one responsible for the cycles of day and night, the repetition of each day. With each cycle, Nut won’t reset—she’ll only grow stronger.”

“......”

“Even if we manage to seal Nut inside me, her power will only increase with each cycle. The contamination of my heart will worsen.”

As I stood speechless, lips trembling, the Saintess continued.

“Mr. Undertaker. Can you really be certain that one day, I won’t wake up and suddenly turn the entire world into hell?”

“......”

“Mr. Undertaker.”

Stroke.

She gently clasped my hand, the one dangling in the air.

The Saintess’s body was cold, but in the thin air of the stratosphere, hers was the only warmth.

“Please don’t worry. I’ll stay here and keep this place frozen.”

For a moment, I didn’t understand her words. My mind refused to accept them. “...What?”

“I’m sorry, but just because you stabbed me doesn’t mean time will die.”

Her voice was soft.

“This is the only way to kill the anomaly of time. I’ll stay here, holding the Void still. In this place.”

“Hold the void still?”

My lips moved on their own.

“For how long, exactly?”

“......”

“This is the 267th cycle. Already. And we still haven’t saved the world. There might be hundreds more cycles—maybe even thousands. Are you saying... you’ll keep holding this void still until then?”

“All moments are fleeting.”

Stroke.

The Saintess bent down and touched my cheek, wiping away the blood with her cold fingers.

“I’ll freeze everything here, including myself. Even if you regress to the next cycle, this place will remain frozen. In the end, the Outer God—and I—won’t be able to interfere with your regression anymore.”

There was something she hadn’t said.

By freezing the world—including herself—it meant that the time stopper would be frozen too.

It would be a perfect seal. A flawless extermination.

No matter how many years passed—thousands, millions, billions, trillions—the world would move on as if nothing had happened.

Everything would move on, except for one person: me, the regressor, who would remember this moment for all of eternity.

“Mr. Undertaker.”

“......”

“Thank you. Because you were there, I didn’t give up. As long as you’re on the other side, I won’t see this world as hell.”

I could feel it.

The Saintess was about to let go of my hand.

She was preparing to banish me from this void, sealing herself and this place, cutting herself off from the world.

This 267th cycle’s Saintess would exist here—forever—quietly subduing an Outer God.

And no one would ever know.

No one would know that there had been a human here who had wished for the world not to turn into hell.

“This...”

My decision was purely impulsive.

“Take this.”

I removed the bracelet from my left wrist and gently clasped it around the Saintess’s right, the hand that was holding mine.

She tilted her head in confusion. “A bracelet...?”

“It’s a Silver Bell.”

Jingle.

The bell rang softly.

“It’s the first thing I grab every time I wake up in Busan Station. It’s just a keepsake, but... I’m sure it’ll be a link that connects us.”

“......”

“Wait for me. No matter how many cycles it takes, no matter how long it takes, I will come back for you. I promise.”

“......”

“I’ll find a way to unseal this place without letting you destroy the world. I’ll come back for you.”

And then—

The Saintess smiled.

—2,000 years after we were reunited, she finally looked me straight in the eye, something she had never been able to do before.

With one hand, she held my right hand, and with the other, she cupped my cheek. Like a child learning how to move for the first time, she awkwardly tilted her head to align her gaze with mine.

In that instant, the black-and-white world narrowed, filling everything between us with hues of white and black.

“Yes.”

A fleeting pause.

The deep, ocean-like warmth lingered briefly on my lips.

“I’ll see you... soon.”

When I opened my eyes, a thin layer of glass had formed between us.

The Saintess, on the other side, smiled and reached out, frozen in place like a black-and-white photograph.

‘Ah.’

I had let go of her hand.

No, it was the opposite. The world of frozen time was drifting away from me, as though I were falling into an abyss.

I reached out for her, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t reach the colorless world.

And then.

I returned to reality.

To a world without her.

Footnotes:

[1] Depending on the interpretation, a geocentric model can include a firmament, or a celestial barrier that separates life on Earth from the waters of primordial Chaos and nothingness beyond.

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