The Tales of an Infinite Regressor

Chapter 146

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Godslayer I

1

Lately, I’ve been too caught up in the extremely private affairs between me and the Master Craftsman Noh Doha (murder) and other overly personal stories.

Shouldn’t people sometimes talk about the world outside?

This time, let’s take a breather and discuss the current trend of the times—specifically, the "End-of-the-Century Apocalypse Trend."

In the past, humanity used terms like "Modernism" and "Postmodernism" to construct buildings and write literature.

But for the end-of-the-century MZ generation, those words are just outdated, obsolete concepts.

The new generation of humanity evolved to be a bit more practical.

"Are you crazy?"

"Excuse me?"

"I counted the number of steps in the stairs you recently built in your new house, and there are 13 of them. Why did you do that? Do you want to take a tour to the depths of hell?"

"No, the local carpenter just built it as he pleased..."

"You must have built up a serious grudge with that carpenter. Cut ties with him immediately and hire another one. Reduce the number of steps to 10 or 9."

"Is it really necessary to go that far?"

"Suit yourself. Do you think I’m the one who’s going to die, or is it you? Oh, look at that! You even made a basement? You’d be safer jumping off a building rooftop than living here. It’s like you’ve put up a notice in your home asking the horrors to come in and stay."

Voidism.

This was the latest trend in the end times.

In Voidism, people considered "how to avoid getting screwed by horrors" more seriously than "how to live comfortably."

It didn’t start out this way.

During the times when nuclear bombs were flying around and civil wars were breaking out, humanity also thought "scientifically."

They would drill into solid concrete bunkers and hide there, or isolate themselves entirely from society to enjoy a solitary survivalist life.

From a scientific standpoint, this approach was correct.

However, the horrors that emerged in the end times generally had rich literary sensibilities and were mostly bad at science.

"Waaaah... Waaah..."

"Goodness, what’s with that guy? Why is he going mad?"

"Don’t even ask. Apparently, he used to be an executive at a big corporation, but he took his whole family and holed up in an underground bunker."

"What? A bunker? That’s crazy."

"Yeah, it is crazy. A bomb dropped on the bunker overnight, his entire family turned into ghosts, and it was absolute chaos. He barely made it out alive and fled to Busan, but is that really living?"

"Waaaah... Waaah... Waaah..."

Horrors didn’t care much for scientific approaches or the "law of causality."

They preferred "reverse causality."

Take an underground bunker as an example.

What is a bunker, after all? It’s a facility built to withstand air raids, bombings, and nuclear attacks.

According to our human scientific thinking, bunkers are safer than ordinary houses.

Unless you have a relative named Osama bin Laden, the chances of a missile being launched specifically to destroy a concealed bunker are extremely low.

But horrors think differently.

It’s not that bombs are launched because there’s a bunker.

It’s that "because there’s a bunker," naturally, "a bomb must be dropped."

In other words, horrors would question, "Why build a bunker if no missiles are going to fall? Shouldn’t the purpose be aligned with its existence?"

As a result, everyone who built and moved into underground bunkers inevitably faced missile bombardment. The Gyeongsang Plain became a wasteland.

That day, humanity underwent a paradigm shift.

"Huh? Someone’s calling me?"

"Shit, don’t answer it! Never answer it! Just shut off your smartphone unless you’re connecting to SGNet!"

A telephone? It’s not a device to hear someone else’s voice but a tool to "communicate with an unseen entity."

Unless you’re a high school student who enjoys spiritual communication with ghosts, making or receiving calls is incredibly foolish.

In "Void Communication Studies," communication relying on tools like telephones is not recognized. Only face-to-face conversations are considered genuine human interaction.

"You idiot! Why did you put a mirror in the bathroom?"

"Huh? Well, because it’s a bathroom..."

"Look at your face now and the face in the mirror. They’re different! Get rid of it immediately!"

A mirror? It’s a tool to "isolate an identical version of yourself in another world." Under no circumstances should it ever be used as an interior decoration—it’s a monster among monsters.

Indeed, up until now, humanity had been too complacent, relying on tools.

In the current world, updated with the apocalypse event, more careful choices became necessary.

"Well, our ancestors lived fine without phones anyway..."

"I can live without mirrors too. Besides, except for the bathroom mirror right after a shower, looking at mirrors always stressed me out."

And humanity adapted.

People simply decided to live without phones, without mirrors, without the conveniences of civilization.

If you think about it, didn’t our distant ancestors hunt mammoths just fine without all that stuff?

But even so, there was one tool that humanity couldn’t let go of until the very end.

A tool that made them feel like they would truly revert to the Stone Age if they let go of it.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t the internet.

As I said, it wasn’t the smartphone either.

The tool that humanity, especially Americans, couldn’t abandon until the very end was――.

-Bang!

The protagonist of this episode.

A gun.

3

Sometimes, when I watch modern fantasy, especially works where "Aura" exists and all the characters fight with swords, I can’t help but wonder:

"Why don’t these primitives use beautiful and cool guns instead of obsessing over cold weapons? Are they medieval savages?"

There’s a long-standing tradition in creative works to downplay firearms and heat weapons.

When a monster appeared in the backwoods of Third Tokyo, the Self-Defense Forces fired all sorts of cutting-edge weapons, but nothing worked. The moment someone coolly muttered, "What a waste of taxes," the fate of thermal weaponry in subculture was sealed.

The horrors clearly watched modern fantasy works with great admiration.

The skin of boss-level horrors could repel bullets, missiles, and even nuclear bombs, but somehow, when faced with a "one-swipe" from an Aura-infused katana, it turned to soft flesh.

"Shoot! Shoot them all! Those bastards are nothing! Just stay calm, aim, and fire!"

-Screeeech!

Of course, there were horrors that could be taken down with bullets.

Goblins. Orcs. Horrors born to be humanity’s XP fodder were quite vulnerable to firearms.

These village-level horrors had large numbers. South Korea, a country with a conscription system, had a lot of fun with firearms in the early days of the Void.

However, firearms quickly lost popularity. After the Ten Tribes enjoyed an Omakase feast courtesy of the South Korean military, firearms all but disappeared.

Why did this happen?

There’s a representative story that explains why firearms met their downfall.

"Sigh..."

One day, Cheon Yohwa, who had come to visit my café, sighed deeply.

Even the spoon she used to stir her favorite cream latte seemed to lack strength.

"What\'s wrong?"

"Ah, well... Teacher, lately our kids have been getting into more fights."

"The Baekhwa High School girls? Isn\'t it normal for them to always be in some kind of tension with each other?"

By the way, Baekhwa High School always had a "yuri spirit" haunting it. It was a unique territorial ghost that I couldn\'t exorcise, so it was left alone.

Even I, Doctor Jang, wasn\'t omnipotent.

As a result, Baekhwa High School was in a constant state of savage love-hate drama 365 days a year.

For Cheon Yohwa, who was right in the middle of that stage, every day must have felt like a new experience.

"Of course, I can laugh off a little tension now, but... hmm, it feels like they\'ve started crossing a line? The other day, one of them nearly died."

"Huh."

"I don\'t say much about them biting their nails or anything. As long as they keep it among themselves and don\'t bother others, it\'s fine. But if someone dies, it affects our entire guild, right? Not to mention the atmosphere would be ruined."

"Hmm."

"I gave the perpetrator the full course of water torture to snap them out of it, but they said they didn\'t realize it would go that far. I probed their mind a bit, and it didn\'t seem like a lie. Teacher, do you think this is an anomaly?"

"An anomaly..."

It\'s a rookie mistake to coldly judge whether it\'s a anomaly or not at this point.

The important fact was that the stress level of "one of the top two guild masters in Korea" had reached a breaking point.

One guild member\'s physical trauma didn\'t concern me much. However, "Cheon Yohwa\'s depression" was a fear of the unknown that could cause who knows what kind of butterfly effect.

If she decided to create a closed space to relieve her stress and started destroying the city, that would be a real problem.

Don\'t know what the previous description is a parody of? Have you forgotten about Haruhi Suzumiya?

Anyway.

I gently smiled.

"Yohwa, how about we visit Baekhwa High School together and check if any sectors might be infected by an anomaly?"

"Oh. Really?"

Cheon Yohwa\'s face brightened up but then turned somber again.

"―Ah, um. But you\'re really busy, Teacher. I don\'t want to bother you because of us..."

"It\'s okay. Baekhwa High School is like a temple with a sealed hell, so it needs regular check-ups anyway. And if anyone, especially you, Yohwa, feels something strange, it\'s worth paying attention to."

"Ah... You\'re the best, Teacher! Thank you so much!"

It seemed like I made the right choice.

We headed toward Sejong City, passing through the Inunaki Tunnel. Throughout the journey back to Baekhwa High School, Cheon Yohwa happily chatted with me.

"Wow, it feels like just yesterday when I was struggling alongside you, Teacher, visiting schools together... Time flies so fast."

"It might have been years for the two of us, but for others, it\'s only been a day."

"Hahaha, true! That makes it feel even weirder. Oh, this way! Teacher, come this way."

The scenery at Baekhwa High School had changed quite a bit since my last visit.

Classrooms had been repurposed. The elevators were all shut down, and the 4th floor was entirely blocked off with caution tape.

"This is the attacker\'s private room!"

"Is it okay for me to just go in?"

"Come on, the kid almost killed someone! They\'re basically a murderer, a murderer. We\'re still waterboarding them in the holding room, so why worry about privacy? We\'ve already thoroughly searched the room."

Both Tang Seorin and Cheon Yohwa, who were two of the top guild masters in the country, had a peculiar liking for water torture. The tradition of Korea being known for its good water taste seemed to persist.

As expected, the only pillar of sanity that normal people could rely on was me, the cultured Doctor Jang.

I searched the private room.

Cheon Yohwa’s claim that they had already finished searching wasn’t just an empty boast; there was nothing new to find in the attacker\'s private room.

"Hmm?"

But something was off about the window frame.

Tap, tap.

When I tapped the window frame, the plastic rang out more sharply than it should have.

"What\'s the matter, Teacher?"

"It seems there\'s an empty space here."

"What?"

I slid the window to the side and started feeling around the frame. Soon, I found an artificially created "gap."

"Let me use some aura."

"Oh. Yes! It\'s okay."

Dark aura gathered at my fingertips. I ran my fingers along the gap in the window frame, and, sure enough, there it was.

A hidden compartment, which the attacker had carefully concealed, was revealed.

I frowned as soon as I saw what was hidden in that compartment.

Cheon Yohwa, who peeked over my shoulder, also turned pale. Even the look on the face of a frontline soldier discovering a hole in the barbed wire at the DMZ would have been brighter than hers.

“…This crazy bastard.”

Cheon Yohwa muttered gloomily.

The hidden item.

It was a handgun.

I immediately picked up the K5 pistol and fired it out the window.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

I fired repeatedly. The sound of gunfire echoed throughout Baekhwa High School until all 13 rounds were expended.

From afar, I sensed other students beginning to panic, but there was no time to worry about that.

"Whew."

"Sigh..."

Only after the loaded bullets were spent could we both let out a sigh of relief.

And for good reason, this "anomaly" was truly dangerous.

Dangerous enough that even Cheon Yohwa, the guild master of Baekhwa High School, and I, a regressor, tensed up for a moment.

"Wow, I\'m so glad I called you, Teacher. If we\'d left it alone, at least one person would have died, and if we were unlucky, up to 13 people could have died..."

"I\'m also glad I came."

That\'s right.

The reason firearms became useless in the post-apocalyptic era. No, it was beyond useless—it became outright dangerous.

All the firearms in this world, without a single exception, were haunted by a anomaly.

[Chekhov\'s Gun].

That was the name of the anomaly that had rendered every gun in the world into a worthless, dangerous relic.