abcnovels
Chapter 243
Chapter 243
Translator: ZERO_SUGAR
Chapter 243
??????
The Experimenter II
The smoke pillars stretched across the sky for half a day before they began to disappear. One by one, they faded, starting with those farthest in the distance. It signified that the cities or strongholds where signal towers had been set were now completely destroyed.
One, two, three...
They extinguished quietly, like candles going out.
When only five columns of smoke remained in the sky,
“Great Witch!”One of Samcheon World’s guild members, riding a broom to scout overhead, approached us. Our leadership gathered on the terrace of the National Road Management Corps headquarters to receive the scout’s report.
“Yes. What is it?”
“A Monster Wave has been detected! It appears that Sejong and Daejeon have already fallen!”
“I see. Well done. Recon squads one through five, return immediately.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
The guild member flew back beyond Busan. With the Saintess’s Telepathy gone, all these reports had to be delivered manually. We still had radios, but they were single-use items—using them even once risked contamination by an Anomaly. It was wise to reserve them only for the most critical battles.
Soon, the smoke columns in the sky dwindled to four. That meant Jeonju had also fallen.
“Everyone, take a final break. Once the fighting starts, you won’t get a chance to rest your eyes.”
There was little response. Most of them were far, far too tense to muster anything to say.
For me, a regressor, this was merely the 687th time facing the world’s end, but for my comrades, it was their first and final apocalypse.
Seoul had been razed in seconds, families and friends killed, human life trampled like a plaything... Somehow, they’d clung to survival and rebuilt a semblance of a city. Yet, deep down, they had all wondered it.
“How much longer can we hold out?”
“Isn’t all this just a futile struggle?”
And now, the answer to that question was descending from the heavens. The smoke pillars marking humanity’s survival ticked down from four to three, three to two, and from two to one. When it finally fell from one to zero,
Dooooong!
a bell’s toll rang out from the sky.
Dooooooong! Doooong!
It wasn’t a melody conjured by Seo-rin’s magic, nor a sound produced by some skilled Awakener.
The sound of the bell itself was an Anomaly.
Whenever humanity’s strongholds were annihilated and only one place remained to make a final stand, when the Monster Wave’s forces loomed just before them, without fail, the “bell” appeared and resounded ominously across the sky. R???B??
Dooooooong! Doooooong!
With each toll of the invisible bell, bright red streaks spread across the sky, as if spilled paint were being smeared over it. The sky succumbed not to the barren space beyond its atmosphere but instead to its final form, transforming into a canvas. Before the bell had cried its twelfth toll, the heavens were thoroughly painted in crimson.
Doooooooong!
The bell tolled precisely thirteen times, then fell silent.
But what it left behind wasn’t merely a painted red sky.
Another witch who had been scouting from high above hurriedly descended.
“Great Witch! Th-the Earth has flattened!”
In the span of just thirteen tolls, the Earth’s geography—or rather, the very laws of the solar system—had been altered. It was proof that humanity no longer had any authority to assert reason or order over the world.
I took a deep breath and roared out in a commanding voice.
“Do not look at the sky!”
My voice rang out.
“Don’t let the sun, the moon, or the stars into your sight! They’re no longer celestial bodies—they’re simply parts of an Anomaly, only a Void! Don’t look at them!”
Although it was something every survivor already knew, I emphasized it anyway.
Humanity had trained relentlessly up to this point, in the dream-space simulation known as Project Kingdom, a collaborative creation of tutorial fairies and writers. This was how, even after the Saintess’s death, humanity could still muster its final stand.
Unlike the confused and scattered efforts in the early Ten Legs Extermination War or the Meteor Shower Suppression Battle, every member here had died countless times in simulation and was a pseudo-regressor in their own right.
My army.
The essence of regression.
“They’re here!”
The faction in charge of sensory organs and blood flow in the army, the witches of Samcheon World, launched screaming flares into the sky, which burst like fireworks.
“It’s the Monster Wave!”
The army of Anomalies spilled across the horizon.
-Woo? O? ? Hu? U? ? ? ? ? U? Woo? ? Hu? ? ? ? U? ? O? ? ? ? O? !
Until now, I hadn’t described the Monster Wave in much detail.
This was because the Monster Wave was simply the gathering and surging forward of every Anomaly, a mixture of all aberrations.
But even amidst this black mass of tactical horror, the most distinct Anomaly was something I could describe.
-Wi? ? O? ? Woo? U? ? U? ? ? ? ? ? ? Hu? U? Hoo? U? ? ? ? ? ? U? !
The Hollow.
In this world, corpses left without proper burials would transform into Anomalies.
The bodies of children abandoned in the rush to evacuate, elderly people killed to reduce the number of mouths to feed and then discarded unceremoniously.
Every corpse left unburied returned without exception. And they clawed at the world that had forsaken them.
The Anomaly that reached Busan’s final line of defense first was one of those Hollow.
It was a mountainous figure. Towering like a seventy-story building, this massive Anomaly was a body overgrown with limbs and lips sprouting like dense fur. Its lips and teeth muttered incessantly, producing a chaotic noise incomprehensible to the human ear.
But if you broke down that noise, it would sound something like this:
- Oh, Mr. Sang-gyu, look at the baby!
- MomDadMomDadMomDad.
- The child has grown up so beautifully.
- Aaaaahhhhhh.
- Oh, don’t even get me started. The kid’s been acting out lately, and it’s such a worry. I thought I’d feel more secure once they turned four...
The head of a newborn, a mother’s fingers, a father’s calf muscles, a relative’s hair—all of them were fused together, dragging intestines as they advanced, this seventy-story monstrosity composed of flesh and bones fused into a single abomination.
And yet, they didn’t hurl curses at “us,” the humans. They didn’t explicitly express murderous intent. It was as if they were merely saying hello.
Look upon us—are we not human?
As though this, indeed, was what humanity had been, these Anomalies, like innocent children, were replicating “human society.”
And the Hollow Anomaly wasn’t alone. Countless others were approaching from beyond the horizon—at a rough estimate, thousands. Considering the distant shadows drawing nearer, this was an army of Hollow formed from billions of corpses.
To be honest, even the Ten Legs that I once mistook for the final boss at the beginning of my regression belonged to the category of Hollow.
In other words, the Monster Wave contained tens of thousands Anomalies who were at the same level of the Ten Legs, and even that was only a fraction of its total force.
“Urgh...”
“......”
No matter how much they had trained, the Awakeners froze before the tangible reality of a world-ending force bearing down on them.
And as always in such moments,
“????Ah????”
a witch’s song resounded.
Seo-rin stepped onto the terrace, taking a position where everyone could see her, and began to sing the Primary Melody.
The meaningless noise emitted by the Anomalies was drowned out by the sound of a single witch’s song, reduced to nothing more than white noise.
But that wasn’t all.
“G-Guild Leader.”
“......”
“I’ll... I’ll pray too.”
Ah-ryeon wore clothes she normally didn’t, at least not in front of me.
The Saintess’s robes. A black and white dress.
It was the outfit Ah-ryeon wore when she acted as the Saintess of the Eastern Holy State. It didn’t hold profound religious meaning, but it exuded an aura of sanctity.
Ah-ryeon’s personal attire covered every inch of her skin, its generous folds concealing her entirely.
It’s often said that clothing defines a person’s aura, and dressed as a Saintess, Sim Ah-ryeon looked worlds apart from her usual ditzy self, her face lighting up with an “ehehe” as she encouraged me.
“Guild Leader... B-best of luck!”
She assumed a prayerful stance.
Suddenly, green grass and flowers began to sprout from the cracks in the concrete terrace floor in a dazzling array of blossoms. The vines quickly climbed up the tower of the National Road Management Corps’ headquarters and spread through the alleyways of Busan, pulsing like a network of veins.
Waves of flowers and grass washed over the final defense line.
“What... is this?”
“My legs... My legs are moving again!”
Flowers bloomed over the wounds of the injured lying in the shantytown’s clinics.
Thin leaves and petals bound their wounds, closing scars, and then fell away in silence.
It was as if spring had descended over all of Busan, scattering petals in every direction.
The petals over amputees’ wounds were red; over organ-damaged areas, they were yellow; for brain injuries, blue petals; and over the sorrowful ones mourning loved ones, white.
A Hundred Blooming Blossoms.
The power of Sim Ah-ryeon, Saintess of the Eastern Holy State.
A wide-ranging skill that endlessly healed any ally recognized within her reach.
A garden flourishing on malice as its nourishment.
Wherever Ah-ryeon summoned her true power on the battlefield, a wave of petals would bloom, painting the sky.
“Wah-wah-whooooa!”
“The Saintess is watching over us!”
“The Saintess has cleared our path, blessing us with the glory of her love! All will be saved by her merciful grace!”
It was only natural that people would be captivated by such a spectacular sight.
“In the name of Mo Gwang-seo Christ!”
With a wild roar, the Saintess’s Guard of six hundred charged at the Hollow.
The sight of a paladin squad attacking a seventy-story Anomaly resembled something out of Don Quixote, except that these warriors were far more competent.[1]
Boom!
The Saintess’s Guard’s coordinated assault demolished the closest Hollow completely.
They hacked away at the monstrous flesh, causing the enormous Anomaly to lose balance and topple forward, shaking the entire city of Busan as it fell.
“Kill it! Kill it all!”
“Let’s go too! Let’s join in!”
“Uwoooo!”
Then, guild members who had fled from across the Korean Peninsula joined in.
Blood splattered everywhere. The fallen Anomaly, massive as it was, was no match for the skilled Awakeners, who sliced through it with ease.
- AAAAAAAAAAAAH.
- Please, don’t hurt my child!
- MomDadMomDadMomDad.
- It hurts! It hurts! Please, save me!
- Why are you doing this? Why kill us? And you still call yourselves human?
As they died, the Hollow mimicked human expressions, voices, and gestures, clinging to the Awakeners. Each voice carried the weight of a curse. Even seasoned warriors who had undergone rigorous training flinched in response.
“Ah??Ah??”
But Seo-rin’s song, now entering the Third Melody, spread mental fortitude across the entire battlefield.
This song of empowerment, which I developed in collaboration with her, was a remnant of the countless struggles we had waged against Go Yuri. Its primary effect was simple: to reinforce the warriors with constant feedback of a singular memory and emotion.
A surge of conviction overwhelmed the fighters: “I will defeat these monsters” and “I will show the final resolve of humanity.”
“Fucking Anomalies...!”
“Don’t you dare imitate humans!”
Their hesitation vanished, and they butchered the Hollow as they had been trained to do.
The Anomaly didn’t go down without a fight. The Hollow, formed from thousands of corpses, clawed, bit, and exploded its entrails like bombs.
Casualties were inevitable. Blood from both the dead and the living stained the ground red.
But Ah-ryeon was there.
Silently, she prayed. Repenting for every hurt she had caused, humbling herself for all her sins, and healing others in proportion to the pain she had once inflicted.
Even if the Anomalies tore into human flesh, vines would wrap around the wounds, flowers blooming and withering within seconds.
And when the giant Hollow was finally annihilated—
Under the crimson sky, a million petals scattered over the area where the battle had taken place.
Injuries: 0. Deaths: 0.
The opening battle had ended in humanity’s overwhelming victory.
“Uwoooo!”
“Bring on those goddamn monsters! Let ‘em all come!”
“Long live Samcheon World! Long live the Great Witch!”
Cheering erupted from every corner.
But with my vision enhanced by aura, I could see the unending wave of Anomalies advancing from beyond the horizon.
The Hollow we had just defeated was merely a fragment of the Monster Wave’s force—roughly one ten-billionth.
One out of ten billion.
“......”
I looked at Seo-rin, who was singing and burning through her lifespan, and at Ah-ryeon, who was gradually edging toward corruption in real time. I tightened my grip on Do-hwa’s sword hilt.
This was just the beginning.
Footnotes:
[1] In the comedic novel Don Quixote, the protagonist and his one man team up to fight against a ferocious giant, which is actually just a windmill.
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