The Tales of an Infinite Regressor

w

Chapter 209

──────

The Opposite VI

11

A Wild Alien God Has Appeared!

The world is (again) doomed! Everyone, run away!

...But no one reacted like that.

Instead, there was a calmness.

Most people already had a neatly organized mental system for categorizing the different levels of anomalies: Ocean-Class, Continent-Class, City-Class, Village-Class, and Below-Village-Class.

Even if I suddenly shouted, "Do you know about Alien God-Class anomalies? They\'re super strong! They even beat up Ocean-Class anomalies!" people would just coldly dismiss me as a nerd.

The members of the Regressor Alliance weren’t much different.

"Are you saying... that Alien Gods are really that powerful?"

Sim Aryeon asked. She was sweating profusely, having just been summoned and rushed over to heal the 264th fairy.

"Why is it called Alien God anyway? Other anomalies have straightforward names like Village or City... But Alien God? It doesn\'t fit the dialectical method, it’s irritating."

"Please don’t be too harsh, Sim Aryeon..."

Surprisingly, Noh Doha spoke up, as if trying to defend me.

"We should not dare to criticize the naming sense of His Excellency, the Grand Duke of Black Books, the Supreme Being and Absolute Shadow of the Library Society. You know... you could disappear without a trace if you do."

"Oh, I\'m sorry! Guild Leader! I always thought your naming was perfect! The best sense ever!"

"..."

Not surprisingly, Noh Doha was mocking me.

For the record, Noh Doha is like a sub-character in a dating sim whose affection level stays at Lv.0 no matter who you target, but (and this is truly surprising) there is exactly one person to whom he allowed an affection level of Lv.1.

That was Sim Aryeon.

The reason? It’s simple. Even if she breaks an arm or a leg, she can heal herself with her healing ability.

They got along well not because of human compatibility or MBTI, but purely because of her healing power.

That’s right. To conquer Noh Doha, you don’t need anything else, just become a healer.

For the record, in reality, the human affection cap is Lv.100.

As for the remaining 99 levels, find the strategy yourself and please upload it to SGNet.

"Alien Gods aren’t called \'Alien Gods\' because they’re small outer gods, but because they alienate the world from humanity."

"Huh...?"

"They\'re gods of the outside. Originally, it was a term frequently used by Karl Marx. In English, \'alienation\' is translated as \'alienation,\' which resonates with the word \'alien.\' I chose the name to capture that nuance—"

"What the heck is that, nerd?"

"..."

"Oh! As expected of the Guild Leader, your trolling is the tastiest in the world."

Calm down, me.

My sword is not meant for slaying humans. Even if I’m confused about whether Sim Aryeon is truly human, her DNA sequence is still 99.97% similar to mine.

I think I know why the world is doomed. This is what happens when you base life on such unscientific material.

"Aryeon. One of the reasons why Alien Gods are terrifying is that their \'patterns\' evolve in an instant."

"Evolution...?"

"Yes. For instance, even if you fail to subjugate Meteor Shower on the first try, nothing catastrophic happens. After all, the pattern of a meteor shower—\'falling from the sky\'—remains unchanged. You can just rally and attack again. But an Alien God immediately compensates for its weaknesses."

Although it was something in the distant future in the 267th turn, when I fought to the death against The Admin of All-Play, this was the reason why I twisted my entire body in effort.

No matter how many light jabs or one-two punches you throw at an Alien God, you can\'t accumulate damage.

One hit.

Only a precisely sharpened, single spear thrust can pierce the fat belly of an Alien God.

This is the most troublesome part.

The strategy of a regressor, which involves accumulating data on attack methods through repeated returns, is completely opposite in direction.

"Let me show you an example. Hey, number 264. Are you conscious?"

"Ugh... I almost went to the afterlife but barely survived..."

The 264th fairy answered weakly. Perhaps because her body had been cut in half earlier, her already small body had shrunk even more.

"Call the other fairies and let\'s enter the \'Otherworld\' again. This time, I\'ll bring Sim Aryeon and the others along."

"O-Okay..."

Simultaneously, the Saintess, Noh Doha, Sim Aryeon, and I entered the dream.

And we actually succeeded in reaching Seoul Station Plaza, the entrance to the [Otherworld].

"Huh? Guild Leader."

But this time, there was a transparent "glass" barrier between us and Seoul Station Plaza, preventing us from entering.

"I can see it, but I can\'t get in...!"

Knock, knock.

Sim Aryeon tapped the glass with her tiny fists.

It wasn’t just Sim Aryeon; the Saintess even tried to chop at the glass with her hand-axe, releasing her aura to the maximum.

But the "glass" didn’t even get a scratch.

The pedestrians in Seoul Station Plaza walked around on the glass as if nothing was wrong.

It was so close, just within reach, yet the glass divided the world, preventing any interaction, like how the afterlife and the real world can’t interfere with each other.

"See? The Alien God blocked the path."

"Ugh."

"Nut probably didn\'t expect me to enter her domain through dreams."

To explain once again, the domain established by the Goddess of Night, Nut, was the "World of the Living and the Dead."

This Alien God had the authority to "designate" which was the world of the living and which was the world of the dead.

That’s why she confined Kim Joocheol\'s vision within the Tombstone and designated it as Valhalla, the afterlife. She even went further, designating our reality as hell.

And there’s almost no way for beings from hell to interfere with the living, in other words, Nut\'s domain.

Yes. Almost none.

w

"But there are countless stories about experiencing the afterlife through dreams. Thanks to the fairies from the tutorial, this \'dream-entry-route\' was pioneered, but as soon as the Alien God detected a flaw, she immediately blocked it."

"Th-Then how do we get in again?"

"Well."

Tap. I lightly knocked on the glass, the boundary between the living and the dead.

It wasn’t just a simple knock; I also infused it with aura, creating vibrations. My dark aura resonated, but the glass didn’t budge.

This is also one of the troublesome aspects of an Alien God. You can’t just brute-force your way through with pure strength.

Though it might be because my power isn’t enough.

"I\'ve named this Alien God \'Nut.\'"

"Nut..."

"She’s a goddess from Egyptian mythology. She governs the night sky, or rather, the universe, and controls the cycle of days."

When Nut destroys the world, it’s always under a night sky.

But this night sky pulsates as if it’s alive, with blood vessels throbbing. The Milky Way transforms into blood-red and green pulsating veins, and the twilight sky drips like blood.

"In ancient Egyptian mythology, the night sky was originally considered to be the body of the goddess Nut. People in ancient times didn’t consider the night sky an endlessly expanding universe when they looked up."

"So, what did they think?"

"They imagined a transparent barrier covering the night sky."

"What? How...?"

"They believed that stars weren’t ‘spheres floating in space’ but ‘holes in the transparent barrier.’ Just as humans breathe, the world breathes too, and those holes, the stars, were thought to be the breathing holes of the world. Every time the world took a breath, starlight was imagined to pour down."

"Huh? Oh... Starlight is the breath of the world..."

"That’s why, in the case of the Pythagorean school, which was influenced by Egyptian mythology, they claimed that whenever the stars moved, ‘the world’s breath’ resonated like a song. They also argued that humans couldn’t hear that song because it was beyond the range of human hearing."

"Wow..."

And so, the inside of the sarcophagus where the Pharaoh’s mummy was placed had the ‘night sky’ painted on it.

They turned the sarcophagus into a ‘small universe.’

Particularly, the stars were meticulously carved because through those star holes, the ‘breathing holes of the world,’ the Pharaoh’s soul was believed to travel back and forth.

"Guild Master! You suddenly sound really knowledgeable! I didn’t know you knew so much, besides memorizing the names of characters from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms..."

This kid...

"Hey, punk. I’ve always been knowledgeable about the occult. I was once an awakened person like you in the support class, but I studied hard to get to where I am now, through study."

"Oh no, you’ve turned into a lecture-giving old man again..."

"What did you say, you brat?"

"Yaaaah! No violence, please!"

Tears welled up in Sim Aryeon\'s eyes as I put her in a headlock.

"S-so, the passage is blocked, but how do we cross over to the other side...?"

"Hmm. Since that side is primarily based on Egyptian mythology, you could cross over by becoming a mummy."

"A mummy?"

"Yes. By the way, to become a mummy, you’d have to remove your brain. The Egyptians believed that the brain wasn’t a very important organ and that people thought with their hearts."

"Eek! That means you’d die!"

"Shall our dear Aryeon become a mummy on behalf of humanity?"

"Nooooo...! It’s the Guild Master who should be left behind, not me...!"

At that moment, the Saintess raised her hand.

"Doctor Jang."

"Yes? What is it?"

"If the obscure goddess Nut has the power to define both the afterlife and the living world, and if she has defined our world as the afterlife... Particularly as a ‘hell’ where souls suffer..."

The Saintess tilted her head.

Her water-colored hair gently swayed.

"Then wouldn’t it cause more phenomena beyond just people suffering from extreme déjà vu due to the regression virus? I mean, truly hellish things."

"......"

Ah.

12

We hurriedly returned to reality.

And outside, hell was in full bloom.

-AAAAAAAHHH!

-I-I’m stabbed! A knife has stabbed me!

First, in Busan’s Gudeok Mountain, instead of trees, knives sprang up and slashed people.

These knives didn’t just stay stuck in the ground but kept expanding and contracting in real time.

The ‘knife trees’ seemed to be spreading down the mountainside and gradually infecting other trees in the city.

-Save me! Please, get me out of here!

-Aaah, ugh. Uwoah, ugh!

At the Tower of Babel square, where protesters had gathered, the stone pavement didn’t just crack but melted down like a gigantic soup.

People floundered in the boiling molten metal. Their skin continuously melted and burst, but bizarrely, it regenerated quickly, causing them to endure endless cycles of drowning and burning.

This ‘boiling molten metal’ also seemed to be spreading from the Tower of Babel square to other areas.

"Guild Master...!"

The comrades were facing these scenes from the rooftop of the National Road Management Headquarters. They couldn’t hide their panic as they turned to look at me.

"This... this can’t be happening! We just stepped away for a moment..."

They had only stepped away for a moment.

But by then, the world had already turned into hell.

w