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5

For an infinite regressor, the world can be likened to a bag of potato chips. Amongst countless nitrogen, one must unearth the rare resource—the potato chips.

Similarly, a regressor encounters exceptions in the endlessly repeating time, just like the me of the 89th round.

“No way, Cheon Yohwa…”

I swallowed the name of the potato chip. The president of Baekhwa High School. Alongside Tang Seorin’s Three Thousand Worlds, she was a necromancer, always mentioned when listing the most powerful guilds on the Korean Peninsula. I never expected to hear her name here.

– It’s not just humans.

For some miraculous reason, this bag of chips had a higher quantity.

– As I mentioned, the influence of the monstrosity extends to objects, plants, and animals alike.

– Think of the monstrosity as a form of radiation.

– The ‘Butterfly Effect’ you are presumed to have hunted was also an apostle of this entity, irradiated by us.

“Wait a minute. Even the Butterfly Effect?”

– Correct. That is the truth.

“…”

My mind fell into chaos.

In the 89th round, Cheon Yohwa was a necromancer. A malevolent student council president who occasionally brought the [Bad Ending: Academy City ENDING] to the Korean Peninsula when bored.

And the Butterfly Effect was a psychotically unstable morpho butterfly that spread tornadoes everywhere, regardless of its mood.

“…They’re so different. What’s the commonality between Cheon Yohwa and the Butterfly Effect that makes them your infected… I mean, so-called apostles?”

– It’s faster to show you directly.

“Directly? Show me what?”

The Fairy Lord extended a hand.

– This entity.

“…”

– I sense your hesitation. Are you afraid? Won’t you grasp it?

I sheathed my sword.

Being a regressor was convenient at times like this. Even if this turned out to be a monstrosity’s trap and I ended up dead, I could at least carry the information “the Fairy Lord is utterly untrustworthy” to the next round.

“Fine. If it’s a provocation, I’ll accept. I don’t know where you’re taking me, but go ahead and guide me.”

As I took the Fairy Lord’s hand, an unpleasant, squishy sensation of the liquid body spread across my palm.

And in the next moment, I found myself standing in the middle of a clean, intact prison.

“What…?”

But it wasn’t Cheongsong Prison. I couldn’t pinpoint where it was. The iron bars and hallways extended endlessly out of sight. No people were around.

“What is this…?”

Squish. The Fairy Lord gripped my hand tightly as it automatically moved towards my sword hilt.

– Do not let go of my hand under any circumstances.

– Or you will lose.

Lose? What?

Before those words fully registered, blink. As I closed and opened my eyelids once, the prison had transformed into a hospital.

“…”

Despite there being no patients or doctors, the beds in the hallway were bizarrely clean. Transparent IV lines hung from each bed like suspension bridge cables. The corridor seemed infinite.

Identical hospital beds, identical IV lines hung at identical angles, the hallway in the same pristine white hue, stretched endlessly――.

Blink. The school turned into an abandoned wooden building. The name Baekhwa fluttered. The sky was bright red. Shattered windows, birch trees scraping their white bark on the glass shards, poking through the windows into the school’s hallway. The school was impaled on a white spike, its body in shambles.

The angles and positions of the broken glass shards repeated every six meters. In each repeating section, old desks and wooden chairs were scattered. Even the moss-covered wood, the sagging spots, and the tilted angles were all identical.

Blink.

A swimming pool. The intense smell of chlorine. Swimming pool lanes stretching to the horizon, the water forming a corridor.

Blink.

A movie theater. It was dark. But it was odd. A regular movie theater wouldn’t have such worn-out wooden chairs like those from an abandoned school. Nor would it have IV lines dangling from each chair.

The theater was showing scenes of a prison. Bars. Hallways. Bars. Hallways. An empty prison. The screen in the theater displayed a prison, a hospital, a school, a swimming pool, and then the theater again. The screen within the screen, the eye within the eye――.

Blink.

The universe moved.

The stars’ movements had no pattern. The colors had no complements. The stars danced, stood on their heads, laughed tirelessly, and then grew silent.

As laws ceased to function, time let go of the world. Colors caught the drooping fingers. Interlocked hands. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, crimson, scarlet, burgundy. Interlocked hands.

Colors danced together in a round. Orange stepped on blue’s foot, red killed orange. The Milky Way turned red.

Blink.

Thus, stars were born and destroyed immediately, forms created and collapsed as soon as they formed. Like bubbles.

Everything in the world was bubbles. Soap bubbles in sunlight gleaming with rainbow-colored oil. Existence was bubbles, life was color.

Blink.

The universe closed and opened its eyelids once. Traffic lights. The moment when the red light turned green, time seemed to hold its breath. A momentary stop signal.

The colors of starlight, the bubbles of planets, the orange killed by red, the dancing colors, the movie screen, the smell of chlorine in the pool, the wooden chairs in the school, the birch bark and glass shards poking into the hallway, the white hospital corridor, the prison bars, the white and black crisscrossing of a pedestrian crossing.

The entire universe.

Was staring at me.

The universe was standing at the crosswalk, looking at me. It opened its mouth wide.

‘Eye’ ‘blink’ ‘open’ ‘see’.

Like a choir that had never practiced. The pitch and timbre varied. Some voices sounded like church bells, others like water flushing in a toilet, some like insects flapping their wings.

The breathing from those mouths barely ‘reconstructed’ through the mouth of the Fairy Lord holding my hand.

– Do not blink.

“…”

– You perceive me as the Fairy Lord, the highest monstrosity overseeing all terminals, but this perception is incorrect.

It felt like my ears were going to be torn apart. No, my brain.

Every word the entire universe whispered was uttered by different vocal organs. ‘Term’ ‘inal’ ‘mon’ ‘stros’ ‘ity’. The sound of a wind chime hanging from a temple eave swaying in the breeze.

A crow’s scream as it’s killed by a hawk. Sounds that should not form language, and noises that did, formed language.

If I hadn’t been a regressor who honed himself over countless times―― just hearing the ‘voice’ of that universe would have destroyed my brain, a powerful intuition surged with nausea.

It wasn’t even an insult to humanity.

The world itself was being violated.

“Incorrect, you say…?”

– Maintaining your ego in this situation is beyond expected scenarios.

– This entity, the ‘Fairy Lord,’ is an interpreter.

– A shrine maiden.

– A priest. The Pope.

– A terminal entity. A commanding role. The highest priest.

– But infinitely lower than a god.

– Silencing the speaking god, speaking for the silent god, and seeing for the blind god, I am the prophet.

– Gods have neither good nor evil intentions.

– There is only randomness. Rejoice. Your existence is equal.

– Screeeeeech!

– There is no difference between a single drop of foam and the Himalayas in the clouds. Laws are not superior to individuals. There is no hierarchy in the ladder of forms.

– I am merely a terminal born by chance. I am a fortune, not a misfortune, for you. You need not hold hostility towards me.

– We merely experiment, just as we were created through an experiment.

“……”

So.

I looked up at the universe with eyes that felt like they were burning. So, that was a monstrosity.

A god of alienation. Alienation Level 5.

The most toxic of all voids. One of the seven most powerful monstrosities among all alien gods.

The one that… humanity must kill.

The enemy of this world.

“…It doesn’t even have a name, does it?”

– Unnecessary.

– Whatever we point to is our god, and whatever we don’t point to is also our god.

“Endless.”

The Fairy Lord looked up at my face.

“Endless Hell. From now on, its name is Endless.”

I spoke as if spitting blood. It was the utmost resistance that the me of the 89th round, who felt like he could be crushed by the void at any moment, could muster.

– As I said, designations are unnecessary.

“No, it is necessary for me. Because I will kill that blind, unseeing god that has violated our world without permission.”

– ……

“Everything in the world has distinctions and keeps its boundaries, but you mix everything together, leaving no gaps between all things. Objects become impermanent, and existence melts away, making it a hell. Thus, it is Endless Hell. You plunder, steal, and defile the laws that clearly exist in the world, making it Endless.”

The Fairy Lord, the fairies――the blinking red of the traffic lights, the stars, the colors, the dance, the movie theater screen, the school, the hospital, the prison――all stared intently at me.

There was a passage in Laozi’s Tao Te Ching that went “Vast and Empty.”

[PR/N: 寂兮寥兮 represents the essence of the Tao]

Silent and desolate.

Before humans distinguished all things, the world existed without separation, so quiet and devoid of noise that it was described as ‘serene.’

It was said, “I do not know its name.” That original world was void, without a name.

To that void, I gave a name.

I pointed with a human finger.

– Endless.

– Endless Hell.

– It is the correct name.

– It is an incorrect name.

– This, too, is a form of randomness.

– I can speculate why the pink entity showed unusual behavior.

The sound of ten thousand layers of laughter split.

For a moment, the smell of chlorine from the pool wafted. It was the breath of this universe’s backrooms.

– I will experiment on you, Doctor Jang.

Thud, the Fairy Lord… No. ‘Endless’ let go of my hand.

At that moment, the traffic light’s glow also turned a new shade of azure blue, like the wings of a Morpho butterfly, neither green nor yellow, an inexplicable color.

The presence of Endless surged towards me. Passing through a freshly painted pedestrian bridge, crossing a swimming pool, echoing down corridors, trampling time and tearing through space.

In that instant, I lost consciousness.

6

“Guild Master?”

A voice reached me.

“Are you okay, Guild Master? Are you back with us?”

“Um… hmm, where am I?”

“Cheongsong Penitentiary. More precisely, where Cheongsong Penitentiary ‘used to be.’ You mentioned having a conversation with fairies.”

“Ah.”

As I regained my senses and looked around, Koyori was gently supporting my head amidst the rubble of a collapsed building.

She smiled.

“Did the conversation conclude well?”

“Conversation… well. I think I saw something, but my memory is… vague.”

“Ah, indeed. Well, this is a bit troubling. Let me think…”

Koyori muttered while touching her chin with her index finger, a sign of contemplation. My mind was still fuzzy as I looked up at Koyori.

“…I see. Do you still remember your promise to accompany me next time you go down to Busan?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. I remember.”

“Well, since you graciously stepped aside earlier, it’s only fair to reciprocate.”

“…?”

“Relax your body for a moment, Guild Master. Take a deep breath—yes. Exhale. That’s it. Well done! You’ve been through multiple explosions, knowingly or unknowingly tensing up your body and mind.”

A stroke.

Koyori’s touch gently massaged the back of my head. Though it was a simple act of affection, it strangely cleared my mind little by little.

Most importantly, memories of ‘Endless,’ which I had observed just a while ago, returned like a flood.

“Ah…”

“Yeah. Looks like your condition is improving. That’s a relief.”

“Condition, you say? Should I call it that? My memory… no, it’s nothing. Anyway, thank you for taking care of me while I was out of it, Koyori.”

Despite being someone who named one of the most powerful monstrosities in this world, I still couldn’t grasp the true nature of the entity before me, who took my hand and gently—lifted me up.

And then she grinned.

“Guild Master, are you happy right now?”

“Huh? Um, yeah. At least not unhappy.”

“Then I’m happy too. Guild Master.”

As always, her smile was incredibly beautiful.

7

There’s a very short anecdote.

“Seo Gyu, I’m actually a regressor, but I’ve had my head blown off by those fairy bosses at least fifty times in tutorials. But last time, I found a monstrosity that stands against the fairy leaders? Endless, yeah. Just watching it is enough to make most people bite the dust. Anyway, that bastard owes you… well, roughly fifty lifetimes of grudges. What do you want to do about it?”

“What, there’s such a fucking bastard? Hyungnim. Obviously, I have to go and take revenge with my own hands!”

He brought him over.

“Hey, you fucking bastard! Did you blow off my headddddd?”

Pewww-!

As soon as we stepped into the emptiness of Endless, our SG’s head exploded like the alien heads in director Tim Burton’s movie “Mars Attacks!”

“Hmm.”

…It seemed like repaying humanity’s enemy was still a long way off.

– Questioner. The End.