Chapter 247

The Experimenter VI

Humanity’s dream had ended.

“......”

As mentioned, those who harbored intense disdain for Sim Ah-ryeon as the Collector of All Anomalies were the ones who fully, swiftly transformed into trees and flowers.

The Collector of All Anomalies had always claimed responsibility for nearly every event in the world—when and where an Anomaly would appear, how much suffering people would endure.

I foresaw the future based on my regressor knowledge. And when standing in for me, the Collector of All Anomalies performed the duties of a prophet.

A prophet widely reviled as the mastermind behind world-ending plots, hiding in the shadows.

Naturally, the more they despised “the one who ruined the world,” the more they “loved humanity,” the less they resigned themselves to civilization’s collapse, and the stronger their hope that the world could change—the deeper the hatred ran for Ah-ryeon, the Collector of All Anomalies.

Dang Seo-rin loved humanity. Since she wasn’t part of the Regressor’s Alliance, she didn’t know the true nature of the Constellations. Thus, she hated what was meant to be hated.

So when the Hundred Blooming Blossoms spread across Busan―it took less than 0.1 seconds for Seo-rin to become a tree in full flower.

A violet bloomed before me.

“...Seo-rin.”

The violet quivered.

A rich, dark purple flower, almost black, hung down from its branch like wisteria.[1]

Swish.

The sea breeze stirred the flowers.

As if answering my call, the violet’s purple petals released a faint lilac scent.

Violets were typically ground flowers, yet she had transformed into a tree. Just as she had leaned on me, putting her weight in my hands. I released Seo-rin’s fingers, now vines, and leaned close to the violet. Quietly, I kissed its petals.

“It was just a bad dream. And it won’t last too long. Let’s meet again, tomorrow.”

“......”

Across from the wisteria, Dok-seo stood, looking over with uncertainty. Unlike the others, her body hadn’t turned into flowers.

“Hey, mister...”

“Yes. Let’s go together.”

“...Alright.”

Leaving behind the violet wisteria on the beach of humanity’s last city, we headed for the Tower of Babel. The city had been transformed entirely into a garden of flowers.

Waaaah!

Some people sobbed, some just moaned, but in this “vegetative” city, the cries of newborns rang out, the last truly human sound.

Beyond that was only chaotic noise.

“No, why! Why aren’t my wounds―”

“Damn it, where the hell is the Saintess?!”

“Stop it! Don’t pull on that! It’s my arm, not a branch! It’s my arm!”

Yes.

When no one died and no one was hurt, people could be noble. They could sing of hope. But when they began to suffer injuries, only a few retained their purity.

In the end, “humanity’s final line of defense” was not just the territory of “Busan” as a geological site. It was the strategy pieced together by the regressor after endless attempts, the social infrastructure established by the Regressor’s Alliance, and the illusion Ah-ryeon had conjured of a world “where no one gets hurt.”

This was humanity’s last line of defense.

“......”

These scenes passed by quickly as we ran through the blurred cityscape. Dok-seo’s gaze wavered as she watched the final sanctuary crumble before her.

“I’m sorry.”

“Huh?” she stuttered. “Wh-what? Sorry for what?”

“This is where I’ve reached my limit.”

She pursed her lips.

The final line of defense had lasted a mere 61 hours, 11 minutes, and 32 seconds, a sweet dream that ended with a chilling gust of emptiness.

- This is F11!Cr҉kk҉ ҉ ҉ this is F11! There are too many of the Hollow! Can’t hold the front! Requesting support! ReCr҉kk҉ ҉ ҉ tatr҉k

- Ahahahar҉kk҉ ҉ ҉ har҉kk҉ ҉ ҉ hahakk҉ ҉ ҉ haha.

- r҉k҉ ҉ ҉ 2 has no issues. Ah! The world’s so bright. The red sunlight’s as sweet as fresh tomato juice...

Crunch!

I crushed the radio. The radios, which had barely held our wide frontlines together, could no longer withstand the Void Poison and had been corrupted. By now, the radio operators at each front were probably receiving phantom orders like, “Hold your position. Reinforcements are on the way.”

I carried Dok-seo up the Tower of Babel. When we reached the terrace, I set her down.

“Well now, welcome...”

Do-hwa greeted us first. She still looked relatively intact, although tiny buds of Dicentra flowers had formed on her cheeks. They looked like tear tracks running from her eyes to her jawline.

“Good to see you again, Regressor Undertaker. Honestly, when I saw the Monster Wave, I had no idea how the hell we’d fight such godforsaken things, but you... Well, you’ve lived up to your reputation as some ‘Regressor’...”

“......”

“So, is it over now...?”

I looked around.

Noh Do-hwa. Oh Dok-seo. Cheon Yo-hwa. Yu Ji-won. And Sim Ah-ryeon, silently praying.

“Where’s Ha-yul?” I asked.

“Oh. She radioed that she’d try to hold them off, but no word since. Not even sure if that was really the Puppeteer kid’s voice...”

“Lee Ha-yul is presumed dead,” said Ji-won. “The Mini-Map shows her marker toppled, Your Excellency. All fronts are collapsing simultaneously.”

Yo-hwa gave a bittersweet laugh. “Heh. Normally, I’d be dying on the front with my squad right now—but you insisted I survive, Teacher, so here I am. I slipped away while they held the line.”

“Thank you.” I nodded. “And among us, there’s an Anomaly.”

“Excuse me?”

I swung my sword toward the confused Ji-won. Her body split in two perfectly.

Everyone’s eyes widened.

“Mister? Even if Ji-won was a crazy psychopath, always plotting a power grab, killing her like that is...”

“Ji-won is already dead, Dok-seo.”

I sheathed my sword.

“Did you forget? We chose to fall back because the Saintess and Yu Ji-won were killed.”

“Huh...?”

“The body here is not Ji-won’s.”

Dok-seo and the others looked down at the terrace floor.

Ji-won’s bisected corpse had vanished completely. In its place was the carcass of an Anomaly with the head of a mouse and the body of a raccoon.

Dok-seo gaped as I murmured, “The Void Poison has already started seeping in here.”

“......”

“To answer your question, Commander Noh Do-hwa, yes. This is our end.”

I approached Ah-ryeon. She wore her Saintess’s gown, her face veiled beneath a cloth thicker than a bridal veil. I lightly lifted the veil.

- ......

And beneath it did not lay Ah-ryeon’s smile, which had once been directed at me.

Calendulas. Baby’s breath. Daisies. Campsis. Zinnias. Daffodils. Azaleas. Carnations. Moonflowers. Poppies. Canola flowers.

A vast array of flowers and vines wove together across Ah-ryeon’s eyebrows, forehead, brow, nose, eyelids, eyes, cheeks, earlobes, philtrum, lips, and jawline. Bearing the language of every flower in the world, the shy girl who once called me Guild Leader, blossomed here without a word.

...Guild Leader...

I didn’t want to look below her face.

In the center of the terrace, where she knelt, innumerable trunks grew, entwining the Tower of Babel and spreading to all of Busan.

...A-are you alright?...

The roots kept growing. Considering the now “flattened” world wasn’t so vast, her roots would soon cover everything.

I opened my arms and embraced the Sacrifice.

With a flutter, the flowers in my embrace wilted, permeating the air with the fragrance of a million blooms.

A conversation from a past cycle came back to me.

“Ah-ryeon. This is your end.”

Sketchbook held in hand, Ah-ryeon lifted her head slightly and blinked up at me. “Huh, what?”

“This cherry tree. This monstrous flower sprouting from the bodies of a mother and child is your final seed, full grown.”

“......”

The Udumbara originated in an old inn in Onyang, Asan, Chungcheong Province.

At civilization’s end, even before the world fell apart, a mother and child died of starvation in each other’s arms.

The Udumbara bloomed in Room 202 on the inn’s second floor. Its branches reached out, climbing over crumbling bricks, through window gaps, a cherry tree draped over it.

I often brought Ah-ryeon along to Onyang to eradicate the Udumbara. Today was no different.

“Ah-ryeon, your Awakening power and Udumbara’s are probably the same type. Healing people, suspending death.”

“......”

“Plants don’t feel pain. If there’s no pain, there’s no wound. If there’s no wound, death itself can be surpassed. A rejection of suffering. That’s your ability, Ah-ryeon.”

Ah-ryeon’s wide eyes looked at me, her usual faint smile disappearing into an almost emotionless expression.

I told her many things.

How to draw aggro. Strategies using the Collector of All Anomalies Constellation. Plans to establish a puppet state, the Eastern Holy State, using Mo Gwang-seo. Stories of becoming a living line of defense under the alias Saintess of the North to face the Monster Wave.

“If you don’t want this, you can erase it all.”

“......”

“I mean it. You don’t have to decide here. If you try it and it doesn’t feel right, just let me know.”

She hummed, chewing on the end of a rounded brush. “But if I don’t evolve into that ‘Bird that Drinks Poison,’ eventually, we... c-can’t stop the Anomalies... uh, the Monster Wave, coming from the continent?”

“Yes.” I hesitated for a moment. “If I come up with a better solution, we might manage, but so far, my solution involves you—and it’s only a shaky stopgap.”

“But if I’m not there, won’t... everyone die? Everyone?”

“Yes.”

Ah-ryeon tilted her head. “Mmm... Guild Leader, I’m just asking out of curiosity. Does... Does my decision even matter?”

I nodded.

Ah-ryeon didn’t nod back.

“Why does it matter?”

“Having the power to save the world doesn’t mean you must save it, Ah-ryeon.”

“......?”

“I think every person in this world holds the power to destroy it. Each person is a world on their own. People think they’re just living their lives, but they’re all keeping their world alive.”

“......”

I knelt down and met Ah-ryeon’s gaze over the sketchbook.

“So, if someone takes their own life, it’s not just saying their life is worthless. It’s saying, ‘This world is worthless,’ too.”

“......”

Why did the world end so suddenly?

Why did Anomalies appear, annihilating humanity with no warning?

I’d pondered this for a long time but never found a definitive answer. But I had one guess.

Because too many people thought the world was worthless, and in response, the world simply emptied out.

Perhaps the Anomalies believed, “Since we fulfilled humanity’s wish, they should thank us.”

This nightmare, it was a dream humanity had desired for so long. The Anomalies were likely sneering at us.

“You have the power to decide this world’s fate, Ah-ryeon. The world repeats endlessly, and even if you don’t remember it, your actions, your words will always circle back to you.”

“I... I don’t understand.”

Ah-ryeon looked down at her sketchbook, and then, she met my eyes once more and almost seemed to be carefully reading what she saw there in my gaze. Hesitantly, she said, “But... I feel so comfortable with you, Guild Leader.”

“......”

“When we talk, my heart doesn’t ache. Even if we’re not talking, I don’t feel any pressure in my chest. Even when I stutter, I’m not embarrassed. The o-others you introduced me to are fun too... and th-that café mocha from last time... Wow, it was delicious! Amazing. I still don’t get how coffee can taste like that.”

She set down her brush and sketchbook. Slowly, clumsily, she wrapped her arms around me.

“S-so...”

...Please don’t cry, Guild Leader...

I held the Sacrifice’s shoulders lightly.

Fighting against the corpses of humans and cities had drained almost all my Aura, but I had enough left to perform one last ritual—for the girl who had smiled at me even as she crossed from the Outer Gods’ Realm.

Clink.

A silver bell jingled on my wrist.

My Aura flowed from my body to the Sacrifice’s petals, stems, and roots—a dark, flowing power.

The next moment, humanity’s final city burned.

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