Chapter 222

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The Explosive One I

Long ago, Old Man Scho was prone to grumbling.

“No, Embalmer! Isn’t there anyone in this world with teleportation abilities? What the hell is on this Earth server, anyway?”

“Hmm... maybe the Tutorial Fairy?”

“Ptooey! We don’t need bastards like that!”

Before going on vacation, Old Man Scho had tried his best to find someone with teleportation powers, though his efforts were, as you know, in vain.

Yet even after he typed “I’m done with this shitty game. Good luck,” into the chat and logged out, I still didn’t give up.

‘There’s got to be a new ability user hiding somewhere. I just don’t know where.’

Unlike Old Man Scho, who pretended to be all-knowing, I, the Undertaker, was a true MZ youth who never lost humility in these times.

Thus, I wandered everywhere, traveling from Busan to Seoul, from Beijing to Tokyo, and occasionally even to Istanbul and Berlin.

“It’s a miracle to work on a masterpiece with the famous Undateikeo. I guess living long enough lets you see everything.”

Occasionally, I even found myself drinking with the leader of the Magical Girl Association, the Great Priestess.

“You don’t seem old enough to be making self-deprecating remarks about living a long life.”

“I don’t look it, but the spirit I’ve absorbed is modeled after Tamamo-no-Mae, a nine-tailed fox. Given that I’ve been living since 2000 B.C., it messes with my mental age.”

“Ah.”

“Oddly, when I look at you, it feels like I’m talking to someone my own age. How strange.” The Great Priestess squinted at me over her fan. “That’s why when I’m alone with you, I keep slipping into my old-fashioned way of speaking. It’s a bit troublesome.”

“Well, for someone who’s lived so long, you don’t speak any foreign languages, including English...”

“Silence. It’s not my fault that I’m a pure-blooded Japanese native. You’re just too fluent in foreign languages for your own good while I’m just average.”

“Thank you.”

Clink.

We toasted. The Great Priestess swirled her glass of whiskey, spreading the scent of alcohol through the air.

Mixing alcohol with the atmosphere creates a vibe. As I inhaled the vibe, not the oxygen, I said, “That’s how one becomes a Magical Girl, right? You find a spirit that’s friendly to humans among the Ya-o-yorozu no kami, and in a ceremony presided over by you, the Great Priestess, they make a contract.”

“Well, aren’t you knowledgeable?” The Great Priestess tapped her chin with her folded fan and laughed. She was probably drunk. “Of course, they don’t necessarily have to be friendly to humans. Even an evil spirit will do, as long as it’s friendly to a single Miko.”

“Ah, I see.”

“And it doesn’t have to be a Japanese spirit either. The rules are more flexible than you might think...”

She smiled slyly.

“So, Undateikeo, have you finally taken an interest in becoming a Magical Girl? If you want, I could promise to make you the strongest Magical Girl on Earth.”

“I’ll have to decline. But I am curious, Great Priestess, how did you end up meeting a nine-tailed fox? Hasn’t it always been the spirit you served?”

“Ah, that happened in the Tutorial Dungeon―”

Casual conversation flowed between us. The quickest way for Awakeners to bond is to exchange Tutorial Dungeon stories. It’s similar to sharing military or college stories, perfect for forming a sense of camaraderie.

“There was a guy called Seo Gyu in my tutorial dungeon.”

And then came this story.

“I call him SG Man, and the Tutorial Fairy tried to kill him as an example.”

“Oh?”

“Apparently, the fairies share a guide among themselves. Their seniors passed it down to them, and it outlines how to discipline humans. The most effective method is to blow someone’s head off as a demonstration—that’s their go-to.”

The Great Priestess flicked her fox ears in thought. It didn’t feel like she was responding to me, more like she was reminiscing about the past, absentmindedly gazing elsewhere.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Oh, nothing. Your story just reminded me of an incident.”

“An incident?”

“Hmm. It’s not something worth telling others about, just a strange little event that stuck with me...”

The Great Priestess hesitated, her lips slightly parted. But since we were drinking casually, I urged her to continue, and after some thought, she folded her fan.

“It’s really nothing significant. Like you and the other Magical Girls, I too was thrown into a Tutorial Dungeon. Naturally, there was a fairy there as well. But...”

“But?”

“There was an explosion.”

An explosion?

I tilted my head. “Do you mean someone’s head exploded?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, that’s not so surprising. The fairies pull that kind of stunt in other tutorial dungeons too...”

“No, Undateikeo. The fairy didn’t do it. The person’s head definitely exploded, but the fairy wasn’t involved.”

?

“Then who caused the explosion?”

“No one.”

???

“It was practically self-destruction.”

“What?”

“One person who was summoned into the Tutorial Dungeon with me, without being touched and without the fairy’s involvement... Suddenly, their head exploded on its own.”

The Great Priestess’s story went like this:

Around a hundred people were forcibly summoned to the Tutorial Dungeon.

The people were confused.

“Wh-where are we?”

“I was just on the subway...”

“Hoek! Hello everyone! I’m Fairy No. 1675, and I’ll be in charge of you! Nice to meet―”

The summoning of the people. The appearance of the fairy.

To that point, it wasn’t much different from the Busan Station Dungeon I had experienced.

The anomaly occurred right after the summoning.

“Aaaaahhhhhhhh!”

There came a horrifying scream.

Everyone turned their heads in shock. There, a woman clutched her head and screamed as she writhed in agony.

“Aaaaaaaah! Aaaaahhhh! Aaaaahhhhh!”

They all froze in place.

How many people have ever heard such screams in that modern age? But anyone could tell that the unknown woman’s cries were far from ordinary.

The Great Priestess gave her testimony.

“It was no ordinary cry.”

Excruciating pain laced her voice, the kind brought forth by the tearing off of flesh. The agony of muscles and sinew scorched alive by flames. The torment of thousands of razor blades flaying skin down to the nerves, scraping deep to the bone.

It was a scream of pain no one had ever heard before and a scream that none were likely to ever hear again.

The people were paralyzed by the sound.

“The scream was so horrifying that the very sound of it sent shivers down your spine.”

The fairy, who was supposed to be in charge of the tutorial, was so shocked that it too momentarily forgot its role of guiding people and started to panic.

“Ho-hoek? What’s going on? Why is she suddenly screaming?”

“Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!”

Even the fairy’s flustered response was drowned out by the woman’s cries.

The anomaly didn’t stop there. Between the woman’s fingers, as she desperately clutched her head, a faint glow began to emerge.

Transformation.

The woman’s originally black hair was turning white, starting from the ends and spreading rapidly.

“...That’s a typical sign of Awakening.”

“Ah, yes. We call it spirit possession. I didn’t realize it then, but now, looking back, that mysterious woman was Awakening her abilities.”

To Awaken the moment they were thrown into the Tutorial Dungeon—her Awakening had been an incredibly fast process compared to others’. Normally, this would have marked the birth of a top-tier Awakener.

But then...

“Aaaaahhhh! Nooo, Awndataka! Noooo! Nooo! Stop! Please! Nooo, Awndataka! Nooo, nooo, nooo, nooo!”

For some reason, the woman just kept screaming, repeating the words “no” and “Awndataka” in rapid succession.

“Awndataka? What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. I thought she might have mangled the word in her pain. But she repeated it so desperately, I can’t forget.”

The Great Priestess described how the woman looked to be in true suffering.

“And it wasn’t just her screaming. She was clutching her head so hard that her nails dug into her scalp, and blood was running down her face.”

“......”

“Now, if it were after the apocalypse, it might have been less shocking. But back then, I had never seen anything like it.”

It went on for about 30 seconds.

While everyone was panicked and the fairy was completely bewildered, the woman’s transformation had fully progressed. Her hair, from the ends now up to the roots, had completely changed color, turning her entire scalp a bright, radiant white.

And the moment the transformation, the Awakening, was complete...

BOOOOM!

There was an explosion.

At first, no one could understand what had just happened. But soon, something soft fell from the air and lightly brushed the Great Priestess’s cheek.

“It was a piece of her flesh. I think it was her tongue.”

“......”

“Do you understand now, Undateikeo? Thirty seconds after being summoned to the Tutorial Dungeon, the woman screamed bloody murder, finished her Awakening, and then her head exploded.”

“That’s...”

It was indeed bizarre, just as the Great Priestess had said.

“You’re sure the fairy didn’t do it?”

“I’m certain. Even before I accepted Tamamo-no-Mae, I was good at reading people’s expressions. The fairy was utterly confused when the woman died.”

“......”

“Well, maybe the fairy was just a fantastic actor, skilled enough to fool me. But I already killed that fairy, so we’ll never know for sure.”

Since it wasn’t a pleasant topic, our conversation soon shifted to other matters.

The Great Priestess, except for her peculiar taste in Magical Girls, turned out to be an enjoyable conversational partner, and we drank well into the night. However, even as the first light of dawn began to filter through the window, the story of the mysterious “Explosive Death” lingered in my heart, like a shadow of the moon.

Why was I so fixated on a simple drinking story?

My heart pounded with an inexplicable sense of unease. It wasn’t something that happened often to a regressor like me.

In the end, I couldn’t take it anymore and summoned Fairy No.264. I relayed the story I’d heard from the Great Priestess.

“Do you know anything about it?”

“If it’s that incident, it must’ve happened to Fairy No. 1679, not Fairy No. 1675.”

Being a dream demon, with its interconnected consciousness, Fairy No. 264’s response came immediately.

“But Fairy No. 1679 died in the line of duty before completing the tutorial, so its data is incomplete!”

“Even a rough estimate will do. Can you reproduce the final words of that mysterious woman?”

“If I use the power of Infinite Void a little, I might be able to recreate some of it!”

“I’ll allow it.”

“Please wait just a moment! Chzzzt, bzzzt. Zzzt.”

Fairy No. 264 closed its eyes and started making static noises with its mouth. Then, in the next moment...

“Aaaahhhhhhhh!”

A distorted voice came out of 264’s mouth. The usual cheery tone of the fairy was gone, replaced by something unfamiliar and eerie.

The voice belonged to what I had called “the mysterious woman.”

“Aaaahhhh! Nooo!”

“......”

I quietly listened to the fairy, who was doing its best to reproduce the woman’s dying words.

Honestly, I found it strange. Why was I so obsessed with this trivial story? Was it really worth using Infinite Void’s resources and a dream demon’s efforts to investigate something overheard in a casual drinking conversation?

But around ten seconds into the playback...

“...Wait.”

I suddenly realized.

I realized what had been bothering me all this time.

“Hoek?”

“Replay that last part again.”

“Understood.”

Fairy No. 264 blinked its eyes rapidly. A moment later, the distorted voice echoed again from the fairy’s mouth.

“Nooo, Awndataka! Nooo, nooo, nooo! P-p-please stop! Nooo, Awndataka!”

“There, that last part, isolate it and play it again.”

“Awndataka!”

“......”

So it was that.

The playback ended, and the room fell into silence. I swallowed quietly as the realization hit me.

The Great Priestess lacked Complete Memory. She wasn’t proficient in foreign languages either. Whether in English or Korean, her conversational skills had always been limited due to her isolationist policy.

It was only natural, then, that she misheard.

The mysterious word the woman screamed during her final moments...

It wasn’t “Awndataka,” but “Undateikeo.”

When spoken quickly, the sound was unmistakable.

Undertaker.

That’s right.

For some reason, immediately after the Void descended, in a Tutorial Dungeon far away in Japan, a complete stranger—a fellow Awakener—exploded while screaming my name.

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