I’m an Infinite Regressor, But I’ve Got Stories to Tell
Chapter 362

WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Editor: LiteraryGirl

Chapter 362

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The Missing XIV

Dang Seo-rin’s—

No.

「So that’s how it is.」

「The “Dang Seo-rin” you picture and the “me” in front of you are separate beings. Someone I can’t even recall is lodged in your heart like a splinter.」

「Come to think of it, you’ve never really looked at me—only at the shadow of somebody else.」

The kaleidoscopic eyes that once gleamed like amethyst lost the line between pupil and iris as the planets soundlessly lined up behind Hecate stopped dead in their orbits.

“Uwaaahhh!”

But to everyone except me, the scene was different.

Dok-seo clutched her ears and writhed. “S-so loud! It’s disgusting! What is this noise?! Where’s it coming from?!”

Even now Hecate’s voice reached me, and only me, clearly. There was no time to ponder why.

Hecate raised her broom and—crack—drove it into the mirror-smooth lunar surface.

「Then I’ll kill them for you.」

「Everything stuck in your heart like thorns.」

「The ragged pieces of “Dang Seo-rin” that never made it this far. They’re useless, anyway.」

In that instant, innumerable magic circles blossomed in the dark void of space. Tens of thousands of gaping holes were etched at once without so much as a chant.

“Eek—”

Dok-seo’s squawk of panic lasted only a moment. From millions of holes, pitch-black hands shot out and lunged at the raiding party like writhing tentacles.

Ji-won and I moved at exactly the same time. I swung Do-hwa left while Ji-won drew her hand-axe right. Parry, cleave—within heartbeats, dozens of slashes severed the black hands.

“Ah.”

There were simply too many.

Clomp! One hand Ji-won missed clamped around her wrist, and the stench of rotting flesh stung our noses. Decay raced outward from the punctured skin.

“Mmph!”

“I-I’ll fix it!”

Ah-ryeon was already in position. She flung healing forth in a panic, and purple globe-amaranths and pure white lilies blossomed where flesh had rotted away. However, the spot the black hand had touched kept rotting all the same.

Before Ah-ryeon could even gasp, Ji-won swung her axe with a blank face, and with a splut, a heavy chunk of flesh went flying away—Ji-won’s forearm.

“It’s a curse,” she said evenly. Red and white petals burst from the stump, regrowing the arm at once. “I don’t yet know how it bypasses Ah-ryeon’s healing. President.”

Cheon Yo-hwa snapped her leg out in a kick as she shouted, “Leave it to me!”

She went about cleaning up the attacks Ji-won and I had missed while deliberately left an opening for a black hand to grab her ankle. The skin there rotted in a heartbeat. As calmly as Ji-won had, Yo-hwa severed her own foot, then snatched up the decomposed left foot.

“It isn’t a simple curse, Teacher! These black hands are perfect clones built from our own biological data!” Her red eyes, able to read the fabric of creation, flashed as she explained, “The trait is Infection! Because each hand shares our exact body, when Ah-ryeon heals us the hands get healed at the same time!”

“I see.”

Every comrade here had once been registered as a citizen of Utopia before escaping Hecate’s realm through Corruption. Naturally, Hecate had stockpiled their data.

“Th-then guard your heads, everyone!” Ah-ryeon cried out. “Arms and legs are fine, but regrowing a neck is a pain—!”

“Gyaaa! T-too many! Way too many!”

Dok-seo swung her bat like mad, fouling off the hands coming for her.

“There’ve gotta be millions! Mister! I-I’m using it, okay?! Absolute Defense—I can pop it, right?!”

I tried to answer no. Hecate was throwing numbers at us precisely to burn Dok-seo’s Absolute Defense early.

[No need.]

But someone beat my warning.

Ha-yul.

[Ready.]

Her voice came not from her throat but from the puppet strings. Threads as thin as piano wire, already webbed across the lunar surface, vibrated and carried Ha-yul’s words.

[Ji-won unnie. Now, please.]

“Of course.”

Now similar in build to Corrupted Ha-yul, Ji-won reached out. A few strands of string looped around her palm. Light welled from the spot as the Aura flooding the moon clung to the threads until hundreds of thousands of strands unfurled like an aurora. From every angle around us came a slicing sound as Ha-yul’s web, charged with Ji-won’s Aura, harvested millions upon millions of black hands in a single flash.

Ha-yul flicked her hand, staying expressionless.

[Easy.]

Perfect native pronunciation. As expected of a scion of that infamous collaborator clan.

[I advise nobody move carelessly.]

[Heads removed are not my fault. Probably.]

“Hah! Behold the ‘Collaborator Princess’s Killing Field’!”

[Whoever coined that line can be the first to lose their head.]

A gap opened. I had no intention of wasting it.

I downed the “blood” that the elder twin insisted I drink, ditched the thermos, and sprang forward with a splash. Ha-yul warned me not to act rashly, but I trusted her and pounded the ground.

One step. Two. The water of Leviathan underfoot gave my soles a gentle push. Looking closer, I was only skimming the surface—my ankles never got wet.

Water-Lily Step.

Hecate’s face, so far away, rushed toward me.

Flick! Flick-flick!

Ha-yul’s wires blanked out wherever I charged, instead swarming toward Hecate’s position.

The moon goddess clicked her tongue.

「Cheap grappling tricks.」

She waved her hand, and slash-marks scored the void. The very slash that had taken half of Ji-won at the start sheared through Ha-yul’s careful web in an instant. Freed to maneuver, Hecate tried to stop my rush by casting another circle, but...

“Pardon me.”

At some point, Ji-won had already positioned herself behind her.

For the first time, dismay colored Hecate’s eyes.

Seeing my head-long dash, she assumed “the Undertaker is fastest,” but it was actually a feint. While she focused on me and the wires, Ji-won dove under the surface and swam the opposite way. Ha-yul’s converging strings had both assaulted Hecate and hidden Ji-won’s movement.

It was flawless teamwork.

“My apologies, Director.”

Craaaack!

From behind, Ji-won wrestled Dang Seo-rin tight—arms, legs, and Aura binding her like perfect pro-wrestling holds.

「You—」

“Obviously this side has better odds. Blame your win-rate, not my betrayal.”

Hecate fought back too late; I was already on top of her.

「Ah.」

Without warning I swung Do-hwa in a single arc.

First Flash.

The blade forged by a prosthetic-knight-turned-smith who died screaming in this universe cleaved both Hecate and Ji-won without discrimination.

「――――!」

God-Slayer.

The title once belonged to a certain pistol, yet the artifact that came closest in my books was none other than my famed sword, Do-hwa. With every loop of the world, “Infinite Void” revived, and so early in each run, I slew it at Baekhwa High with this very blade. In other words, except in vacation runs, the more my returns piled up, the more layers of “killed an Outer God” painted themselves onto Do-hwa.

Hundreds of divine deaths lacquered onto one edge.

That cursed steel pierced the Goddess of Night.

She did not escape unscathed. By holding Hecate to the bitter end, she paid with her own body, carved to pieces.

She coughed, spitting blood—blue, not red. Taking a God-Slayer hit head-on put even her near erasure, and yet...

“H-heal.”

We had Ah-ryeon.

Though everything below Ji-won’s waist was gone, lilies flowered to life in boundless blossoms, and her lower half regrew whole. It was a suicidal tactic, possible only because a Saintess of the North bloomed among us and because the team’s trust was absolute.

“Teacher!”

Cheon Yo-hwa dashed over with Ah-ryeon and Dok-seo carried piggy-back, then set them down—Splash! Blagh! Ack! Ow!—and pressed close to me.

“Did we win?!”

“H-hey! You idiot!”

Dok-seo jerked up from where she’d landed face-down in a puddle. Even her trademark cap slid off her soaked head.

She knew Yo-hwa bears grudges forever, yet she hadn’t even faked formal speech. She must have really panicked.

Wilting under Yo-hwa’s glare, Dok-seo stammered, “N-no, that’s a flag! Say that and the boss never dies... sir!”

I approached Hecate with a splashing step. While the two ran their comedy skit, I’d kept my eyes on her.

‘It doesn’t matter if she dies now or revives whole—both are bad. We need her in suspended animation.’

Only then can we dive into her subconscious and pry the human Seo-rin free.

My collar tightened as someone came up beside me and grabbed my shirt—Ah-ryeon.

“Sh-should I heal her, Guild Leader?”

“Just keep her breathing. Let’s watch a bit longer.”

Hecate floated in the puddle, half of her body missing. However, relaxing would be fatal.

‘She’s the one who beat Go Yuri.’

For some reason, every voice but mine reached her as raw static. The same went for Go Yuri, no doubt. Her supreme brain-washing could charm anyone, anywhere, but to Hecate, it might have sounded like sheer noise. She herself had admitted she tossed Yuri’s head aside because it “irritated” her.

‘All living things on Earth felt filthy to her, so paradoxically enough, Go Yuri’s hypnosis was sealed.’

Thus, Go Yuri’s strongest weapon—Distortion—had been nullified.

‘Even so, Hecate’s magic feels bizarre. There was no trace of her Cursed Song Incantation lead-in, yet she fires off grand spells chantless... How?’

I stared down at her half-dead face. Then in a blink, a memory flashed before my eyes like lightning.

“Actually...”

Not that long ago...

“I heard a song.”

It was back in the 999th run. Given that this is the epilogue extending from the 999th, you could call it the 1000th run.

“A song?”

“Yeah. A song, or maybe a sound. Usually it’s just noise. But whenever I approach certain people or places... I hear a particular ‘sound’ they have.”

At the intersection before the fallen-flower park, Dang Seo-rin had confessed.

“Look at the sunset overhead. You see red, right? But I don’t just see red. I hear the sunset’s distinct sound in my ears. It’s kinda like the sound of waves.”

The confession puzzled me. I knew she wove magic through song, but only in the 1000th cycle did she reveal that the entire world dissolved into “sounds” for her. The idea that she’d hidden it till then made no sense. She had no reason to.

“I can hear a song from you too. It’s very sad, but also very clear. Really faint... but really strong.”

A hypothesis crystallized.

‘What if when Seo-rin was fully devoured by the Outer God, those “sounds” warped?’

Then it hit me. Humans couldn’t perceive infra- or ultrasonic. Our hearing range was narrow. So what would happen if this universe held sounds only Seo-rin—only Hecate—could hear? To her, they’d be unbearably “loud,” “irritating,” and “grating” noise for any human ear.

‘The premise that no sound exists here is wrong. It’s the opposite—we just can’t hear it. This Void is already crammed with silent choruses she laid down in advance.’

A chill down my spine. Time seemed to drift slowly before my eyes—evidence my mind was racing.

‘Hecate isn’t spamming grand spells chantless! She’s triggering songs she prerecorded all over space! Songs we can’t hear!’

So even now her cursed chorus was singing with the volume turned to zero.

“Everyone!” The party looked over at me as I shouted, “Hecate is not defeated! Her magic is still active! Full defensive formation!”

With no questions or complaints, they snapped into place behind me. Our lines of sight combined to scan in every direction.

Ha-yul’s strings webbed anew. Ji-won’s Leviathan curled around us like a sea dragon. Ah-ryeon’s petals scattered over the water.

The moon lay in utter silence.

‘Think, Undertaker. A hint must be in my memories. My ears hear no song, and neither do the others. Yet somewhere a chorus is playing. Where? Where did Seo-rin—did Hecate—hide her song?’

The now-flat Earth below was nothing but clamorous static to her, my allies—her old allies—included. Everyone but me must have become “unbearable noise.” And so she fled to the moon, away from the din.

‘In other words...’

For Seo-rin, this Void was safe from that hellish racket. As if a gentle lullaby filled that empty space.

I sucked in a breath as another flashback washed over me. The scene coloring my mind now was, in one sense, older than the 1000th cycle yet in another, painfully present.

“Mr. Undertaker.”

Same setting.

“This world is hell.”

The moon.

“The world is hell, yet no one takes responsibility for it. They take no effort to change it, or say it’s too slow.”

Each time I slew Infinite Void at Baekhwa High, Infinite Void planted hallucinations in me: dreams of rail-travel with Seo-rin alone, of tea-time with the Saintess. And in those dreams, the setting was a silver, gleaming moon like this one.

“Just one layer.”

“Just one layer below the surface of that planet... it’s all hell.”

The Pythagoreans said the cosmos were made of ten bodies, and those ten bodies sang a “music unheard by men.”

‘In short...’

The Saintess on the moon, whom Infinite Void showed me, might have been speaking to me inside the universe Hecate had already warped.

If every clue had been foretold since then...

‘The Pythagoreans were more mystics than mathematicians. They believed the ten celestial bodies make sound as they orbit.’

Like heartbeats, like harmonies.

‘Thus, the universe is forever filled with that cosmic music, or so those ancient heretic magi believed.’

Ten bodies, a symphony in ten layers.

‘We humans grow so used to the song that we no longer notice it.’

I looked around.

‘Uranus and Neptune... They’re missing.’

First layer, Earth.

Second, the moon.

Third, Mercury.

Fourth, Venus.

Fifth, Sun.

Sixth, Mars.

Seventh, Jupiter.

Eighth, Saturn.

Unsure where the missing two layers lay, I still shouted to my comrades, “It’s the celestial bodies!”

Dok-seo blinked. “Huh?”

“The planets are singing! Each celestial body in this Void is taking part in a chorus we can’t hear! Until we destroy every last one, the magic won’t stop—Sun, Mercury, all of them! Every planet is an empty shell polluted by the Goddess of Night!”

The moment my words rang out, countless boulders blinked into being from the planets’ shadows. Meteoroids packed the Void.

Blink.

Each rock bore an eye.

Blink, blink.

Millions of eyes opened and fixed on us.

One comrade managed a gasp. “Everyone, look out!”

Archmagic—the aspiration of all magicians. The ultimate sorcery.

“A meteor shower!”

A meteor descended.

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