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Chapter 141

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A Fortunate One III

4

The luck didn’t run out.

Even as I played an endless defense game against the flood of forces pouring in from the continent at the Reversed-Great Wall, “opportunities” kept coming my way.

[Doctor Jang, it has been confirmed that the \'pink entity\' you warned us about last time has moved to Kyushu, Japan.]

The greatest enemy of a regressor, the master of gaslighting, Koyori, had taken it upon herself to defect from Korea.

This was unprecedented good news. From my perspective, I felt like giving her a generous settlement bonus for her relocation.

And that wasn\'t all.

[No status window anomalies have appeared.]

“What?”

[We concentrated on observing the date and location you provided, but no one saw a status window.]

“......”

[Perhaps this is also due to the influence of the ‘Monkey\'s Paw’?]

And that wasn’t all².

Luck didn’t only unfold in the physical world. My luck didn’t stop even in the net community.

In short, a wave of Romance of the Three Kingdoms parodies had begun to sweep through the SGNet novel serialization board.

- Lu Bu Hides His Father (★9.9)

- Ten Regular Attendants as Grand General (★8.7)

- [Alternate History] Ordered to Advance North, but Woke Up in Hanzhong, Not North Korea?! (★9.2)

- The Three Brothers Always Slept in the Same Bed [19+ Uncut Version] (★9.8)

- On the First Day of Possession, I Became Zhang Jue, the Man Who Killed Cao Cao\'s Father (★9.9)

- Possessed as a Yellow Turban Rebel, But Why Is There a Copy of Das Kapital in My Hand? (★9.6)

The rankings were dominated by Romance of the Three Kingdoms parodies everywhere you looked on the board.

Indeed, Romance of the Three Kingdoms was now a thoroughly YOUNG and MZ-style content.

Not just on the novel serialization board, but even in the free board, the heart of SGNet, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms discussions flowed without any cooldown.

- Anonymous: Romance of the Three Kingdoms <<< I thought it was content for old folks, but after reading the novel, the play, and the history, there\'s no work quite like it.

- Anonymous: How great was Ma Su\'s mountain climbing? Let\'s find out by organizing a mountaineering team to China. We\'ll depart according to everyone\'s guild leave schedule. Sorry, but given the dangers overseas, only those capable of diving to a depth of 600m or more will be accepted. Please inquire if interested!

- dolLHOuse: What’s up with SGNet lately? Is everyone collectively getting prescription glasses?

└ Anonymous: We’ve got a newbie who hasn’t read Romance of the Three Kingdoms yet. LOL.

└ dolLHOuse: I’ve read it, though?

└ Anonymous: So, which faction do you support?

└ dolLHOuse: As long as it\'s not the big-eared guy, I don\'t care. Anyway, all those characters end up as nobodies in the Five Barbarians and Sixteen Kingdoms ending, right?

└ Anonymous: Blocking you.

-[Three Thousand Worlds] Witch Trial Judge: The night sky is beautiful today. Was this the Prime Minister\'s feeling when he looked up at the stars in Wuzhang Plains?

- GoryeoJang: Wow, seriously, lately I just want to bury all these idiots here in coffins.

-[National Highway] Historian: We hold a weekly meeting in Busan to read and discuss the original Records of the Three Kingdoms. (4/6)

Before I knew it, I had been engrossed in the community on my smartphone for six hours straight without even blinking.

“Whoa.”

I shuddered.

I had always nagged Aryeon to quit her internet addiction.

But here I was, in my 590th turn, finally experiencing the true pleasure of community surfing.

‘Is this the true power of the Monkey\'s Paw?’

I couldn’t tear myself away from SGNet.

It was as if the honey specifically crafted by a master for me, Doctor Jang, had been smeared all over the smartphone screen!

“Ugh. How terrifying, Monkey’s Paw! This is a power that would have already bewitched an ordinary human!”

“......”

Hayul, who happened to be passing through the living room, gave me a disgusted look, as if I were a pathetic creature. It was the look of a responsible younger sister staring at her deadbeat older brother before she disappeared.

Right.

In my 590th turn, I was learning firsthand what it felt like to live the life of a cult leader (hope edition).

Everything in the world was going my way!

Every business I touched progressed flawlessly, and troubles I couldn’t handle simply never arose in the first place.

But I wasn’t a cult leader.

I was an ordinary citizen who preferred the subway over a limousine. Therefore, I could tell without even looking at the route map that the name of my next stop on the path of fate was “Destruction.”

Indeed, the seventh year had arrived.

The 10th year, the due date for the payment of the debt of fortune I had asked the Monkey\'s Paw to defer, was fast approaching.

‘Should I kill myself?’

A drastic decision was needed.

‘Extreme choices’ are something that anyone who has lived as a debtor for seven years would understand. For a regressor, it wasn’t even all that extreme.

If I were to say, ‘Wow, thanks to the Fortune Quota System, I’ve enjoyed this round to the fullest^^ Now, I’ll be off to the next round...’ and then leave the chatroom, wouldn’t I be able to escape safely from that future mountain of debt?

It was maddening to think I had to leave this Romance of the Three Kingdoms paradise, but a regressor must know how to put aside selfish desires for a moment.

“Ah... I wouldn’t recommend that, sir.”

The other expert had a different opinion.

“Why?”

"Hmm. The situation might actually get worse."

Cheon Yohwa, who had listened to my concerns, gave a wry smile.

The reason I confided in her about such a personal issue was that, among our group, she was the one with the most expertise in dealing with anomalies—besides me, of course.

As everyone knew, Cheon Yohwa had sealed the Endless Hell (the alien-god) within an hourglass.

Including the anomalies from school ghost stories, she carried a total of 100 "pocket monsters" with her.

If another trainer saw this, they might have sued her for exceeding the allowed number of Pokémon one could carry alone.

Fortunately, this world wasn\'t the type of genre where one imprisons creatures with masochistic instincts and forces them to fight in a coliseum. But for that very reason, the anomalies naturally harbored a deep resentment toward the warden who had imprisoned them.

In short, the anomalies, led by Endless Hell, were constantly plotting rebellion whenever they got the chance.

No wonder Cheon Yohwa was stressed out every day, gorging on tteokbokki from the snack shop in front of the school.

Like the saintess, she too was burdened by the inevitable fate that the stronger an awakened one became, the closer they came to corruption.

"Things will get worse?"

"Yes, that\'s what I think."

"Hmm. The last time I checked, the ‘Monkey’s Paw’ didn’t have the ability to notice regressions. It didn’t even have the power to grant Kuro the ability to regress. If I just close my eyes and regress, wouldn’t the debt disappear as well?”

"Ahaha. It’s precisely because of that Kuro person that the ‘Monkey’s Paw’ ended up being applied not just to individuals, but to the entire world, right?"

"......"

"At first glance, it seems like the people who make wishes are the ones parasitizing the ‘Monkey’s Paw’. But I think it’s the opposite. The ‘Monkey’s Paw’ is the one that’s parasitic."

"An anomaly that parasitizes people?"

"Yes!"

Cheon Yohwa clapped her hands together.

Despite the seriousness of our conversation, she seemed to enjoy sharing these thoughts with me.

Well, given that she spent 365 days a year competing with a near-divine anomaly for control, I must be a precious conversation partner for her too.

There weren’t many people who could empathize with the terror of anomalies as much as we could.

"Think about it, teacher. The ‘Monkey’s Paw’ probably can’t grow stronger on its own. Someone has to make a wish to it, and only then, using that wish as a pretext, does it increase its power."

"Hooh."

"From the perspective of the ‘Monkey’s Paw’, Kuro must have been incredibly grateful. If someone had prayed for just a normal desire, the ‘Monkey’s Paw’ would have remained a fairly ordinary anomaly. But because Kuro wished for an excessively \'high-level wish\', the ‘Monkey’s Paw’ also escalated in rank along with that wish!"

"So, if by any chance, I, a regressor, simply run away thinking I can just regress anyway..."

"Then the ‘Monkey’s Paw’ might gain the power to control both fortune and misfortune, even surpassing regression. At least, that’s my guess."

"Hmm."

"That\'s why I don\'t recommend suicide. Besides, I wouldn’t want to see you dead either, teacher. Hehe..."

She had a point.

Thinking about it, even I, who had criticized Kuro’s foolishness, was now about to commit a foolish act.

The \'fortune of an ordinary person\' and the \'fortune of a regressor in their 590th turn\' were clearly on different levels.

Just consider the scale of what the ‘Monkey’s Paw’ had done in this turn.

A senile old master swordsman had regained his youth.

A meteor shower that was supposed to appear much later had been summoned to the East Sea, and it even involved a perfectly timed UFO collision.

As a result, the Black Great Wall, something that should never have existed, had appeared in the northern part of the Korean Peninsula.

In other words, the power of the ‘Monkey’s Paw’ had grown to the point where it could bring about such large-scale "opportunities."

By the standards of the Library Society classification system, I should probably consider its danger level to have already reached oceanic proportions.

‘Could it be that I’m in serious trouble?’

A sense of urgency began to creep up on me.

I had to find a solution somehow, before misfortune started to really pour in.

"On the contrary, I think you need to survive as persistently as possible in this turn, teacher."

"And why is that?"

"Well, if you die without having fully experienced the misfortune equivalent to the fortune you\'ve enjoyed in this turn, that ‘unpaid misfortune’ might carry over to the next turn, don\'t you think?"

"Hmm..."

I stroked my chin.

Talking with Cheon Yohwa had stirred something in my mind, a kind of itch that made me feel like I was on the verge of a good idea.

‘Wait. I feel like I’m just about to come up with a good idea...’

At this point, I hadn’t yet fully grasped what that "good idea" was. That would be covered in the next episode.

But I had at least figured out the general direction.

"Then, according to what you’re saying, I need to become as miserable as possible from now on."

"Ahaha... Yes. But intentionally seeking out misfortune isn’t exactly easy, you know? It’s a bit tricky."

"No, there’s a way. A very clever plan, in fact."

"Oh? Really?"

I nodded.

And then, with utmost seriousness, I said,

"Yohwa."

"Yes, teacher."

"Have you ever heard of something called the \'Hate Pill\'?"

"......?"

5

The ‘Hate Pill.’

Should I call it a genre? It’s more of a meme.

Cheon Yohwa tilted her head, indicating she had never heard of it before, which was understandable. Its origin was from the neighboring country across the sea from the Korean Peninsula.

Some people often think that Japan lacks creativity or originality.

- Tonkatsu? Isn’t that just a variation of a cutlet?

- Japanese curry? It’s just Indian curry adjusted to suit Japanese tastes.

But that’s a misconception.

If you remove the "all-ages" filter from the lens through which you view the world, you’ll suddenly witness the creativity erupting from the Japanese archipelago like Mount Fuji.

Just take a look at how they took the characters from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, swapped their genders, and created the "TS Three Kingdoms genre," also known as the Koihime Musou genre. This bizarre creation came from the Japanese archipelago.

There are countless other inventions that are difficult to mention due to various reasons.

The only region that ever displayed more creativity than this was ancient Greece. (The Greeks impregnated the thigh of their chief god and dressed the most invincible hero in history in women’s clothes.)

Anyway.

The "Hate Pill" is another example of Japan\'s eccentric creativity.

- If you take this medicine, people’s affection towards you will reverse!

- Reverse affection?

- Yes. Everyone who used to like you, including your family, will now hate you just as much as they liked you. It’s literally a "Hate Pill."

- ......?

- The people who used to subtly show affection towards you will suddenly change their faces and start cursing you, wishing you dead! Oh, but don’t worry. People who already disliked you will continue to feel the same way!

- Why would you even want to include such a medicine in a story?

- Because the effects have a time limit.

- ......??

- After the effects wear off, the people around you will start to regret it. They’ll see how the protagonist has become utterly broken because of their curses and think, "What have I done to the protagonist I liked so much? How could I have said such horrible things...?"

- What’s the point of that?

- Huh? Isn’t it satisfying to see characters in despair after they’ve wronged the protagonist and feel remorse?

- ......???

Building up a narrative over dozens of chapters just to make the protagonist miserable is incredibly inefficient from a practical standpoint.

Modern people, who always prioritize efficiency, would rather just slap on the tags #Regret #Obsession #Despair and be done with it.

And the way to do that was through the "Hate Pill."

It was Japan’s instant three-minute dish of misery.

In simpler terms, you could call it a "reverse affection medicine." Just taking it would make you miserable.

So how did I, Doctor Jang, come to know about such an obscure foreign genre? Well...

Just a reminder, this story took place in the 590th turn.

And I’d already binge-read every web novel in existence and even pulled a Misery on the authors by the 560th turn.

End of explanation.

"So you\'re saying you’ll take the \'Hate Pill\' to intentionally trigger \'misfortune\' and escape the grip of the law of fortune equilibrium?"

"You understood perfectly."

"Wow, you’ve really gone crazy in style."

The person who introduced me to web novels and the only one among my comrades who knew about the "Hate Pill" because of their nerdy inclinations, Oh Dokseo, nodded in agreement.

"That’s a brilliant idea. As expected of my protagonist. Let’s test it right away!"

For the record, Oh Dokseo loved despair-themed stories.

"But where do we farm the Hate Pill? It wasn’t mentioned anywhere in Omniscient Regressor’s Viewpoint."

"Oh, Oh Dokseo. Just as you get ginseng from Joseon and the queue from the Qing Dynasty, wouldn’t it be obvious where to farm the Hate Pill?"

"Oh."

Indeed.

We immediately set sail for the "place of origin."