Let's talk about Dang Seo-rin, the guild leader of Samcheon World.
"There's venom in those eyes."
"..."
"I'm talking about you, you know? One of the few people who actually survived Busan Station. You have a reputation for asking everyone bizarre questions."
I first met Dang Seo-rin in my fourth run.
Regrettably, I had not yet acquired the [Complete Memory] ability—that came in the fifth run. Thus, there might be some inaccuracies in my recollection of our first meeting.
No. I'd rather not admit it, but there are absolutely errors. It's a past that's already more than a millennium old, after all.
"Your name?"
"...Undertaker. It's an alias."
"You bury people? Not bad. The depth of a person is determined by how many corpses they have buried in their heart."
Perhaps Dang Seo-rin didn't say "venom in those eyes" but "fire in those eyes." She might have used "your" instead of "those." It might have rained that day, or not. I think I heard the sound of water, but perhaps it was just the sound flowing from my heart. Nevertheless, I can vividly recall the atmosphere from that time, and the contours of its air.
To live, one must breathe not only the oxygen drifting before one's eyes but also the air from the past that has already flowed by.
"How about it? Won't you join our guild?"
"What's the guild's name?"
"Samcheon World, or just Samcheon for short. It's my personal ambition to someday recruit three thousand Awakeners.[1] Undertaker, I need your strength to subdue the Ten Legs."
The person who made up a fair share of my breaths smiled and extended their hand.
At that time, I had no reason or leeway not to take it.
"Oh, by the way, everyone in our guild must wear a cone hat wherever they go."
"...A cone hat?"
"Yeah, you know, the hats witches wear in fairy tales? That's our guild symbol. You have to carry a broomstick too. You haven't eaten lunch yet, right? I know a great place. I'll take you there to celebrate you joining us."
"I withdraw my application."
It was irrevocable.
Exchanging the broomstick for a sword later on was the best I could do.
Dang Seo-rin was cunning and stubborn, and she knew the local eateries well. People called her the Witch of the Train Station and the Witch of the Cursed Song.
…Though in hindsight, maybe I was the only one who called her by that last name.
Of course, there was another nickname that I used more often for her.
Why hide it?
She was once the guild leader to me.
Looking back now, it might seem like a bit of an outdated joke, but in the very early days of my regressor life—say, around the 10th run—there was a boss monster that stood like the Wailing Wall, blocking the path of all Korean Awakeners.
"Wait. What is that?"
"Oh, oh no... it's coming this way!"
Ten Legs.
According to the classification system established by a wiki group called the Library Association, this monster was a polis-class hazard. Its identifier was 'Crawling Cthulhu'.
"Crazy! How can it move so fast?"
"It's Cthulhu! It's Cthulhu!"
"What the fuck...? Sound the alarm! Sound the alarm, dammit!"
Opinions were divided on how Ten Legs came to be known as such. Where there should have been legs, there weren't any, and instead, hundreds of tentacles waved like human arms—hence the name. Personally, though, I subscribe to the theory that 'those fucking pieces of shit' somehow morphed into 'Ten Legs'.
That first boss monster of the Korean peninsula brought us great despair.
"We need to capture it to reclaim everything south of the Han River and push the two-front battle into a ceasefire."
Dang Seo-rin, however, did not despair. Not only that, she also rallied the despairing Awakeners into a guild alliance and was promoted to its leader.
Let's call it the Anti-Ten Legs Coalition.
What made it different from the Anti-Dong Zhuo Coalition in Romance of the Three Kingdoms was that unlike Yuan Shao, Dang Seo-rin was exceedingly competent.
"Undertaker, you will lead the elite of other guilds at the front and stall Ten Legs as long as possible."
"Understood."
After I learned about Old Man Scho, he took over leading the vanguard, but until then, I was regrettably the best we had. That should give you a sense of how lackluster the Awakeners were at the time.
Ah, by the way. When I was a member of Samcheon, I naturally spoke very respectfully to Dang Seo-rin.
"My deputy died yesterday, so I am a bit under the weather... But I will try. How many minutes should I hold out?"
"Hold out for just 30 minutes. I will set up an archmagic spell to back up the suicide squad."
"Understood," I said, nodding. "That sounds easy."
It was not.
-G̴̣̪̓r̴̛̰o̴̭͑̉ö̸̢̱́̑o̸̻̽͋u̶͎̟̍u̶͖̓u̵͓̒g̵̳͍̾ḣ̷̥̖͘!̴̮̻͐͒
The Ten Legs roared.
Within exactly two minutes of the combat starting, one of its tentacles had bored another hole in my head. What's there to do? If an expressway is laid right through the middle of the brain, even a regressor has to die gracefully.
I did well to last those two minutes. Other Awakeners were harvested almost instantaneously. Had any autumn farmers seen it, they would have drooled over its scythe skills. I managed to hold out until the end with Dang Seo-rin until I ultimately became just another head of grain.
Fourth run over.
Fifth run start.
"Undertaker, you will lead the elite of other guilds at the front and stall Ten Legs as long as possible."
"It's going to be damn difficult."
This time, instead of putting on bravado in front of my guild leader, I decided to be more honest.
Dang Seo-rin's eyes widened. "Difficult?"
"Yes."
"I thought with the combined forces we currently have, plus you, we could manage to delay it. Is there something wrong with the data we collected?"
"The data isn't wrong. Ten Legs, that bastard, is hiding its strength."
It was disheartening to see how the world was turning out. The meta of power-hoarding should be my role as a regressor, but a damn boss mob was doing it.
"The legs it usually shows aren't all it has," I continued. "It can sprout more anytime from inside its body like tentacles. Honestly, even 5 minutes is tough, let alone 30."
"...Vice guild leader, if that's true, we might have to abandon the campaign entirely."
"Yes. Let's give up."
"Yeah. Let's do that. Should we run away to Busan?"
"Sounds good. It's a place of tradition and trust, isn't it?"
"With lots of good food?"
We retreated to Busan. It was a region that could sufficiently satisfy Dang Seo-rin's palette, which always sought out local eateries first. It was originally our guild's home base anyway.
The problem was that Ten Legs wasn't just stuck to a Gate but roamed freely, a truly liberated spirit. Not unlike Dang Seo-rin, it toured various regions seeking out local flavors. Its menu consisted of one particular item: human meat.
After laying waste to Seoul, it zigzagged across the country, proving itself to be a solo-travel foodie who could have appeared on a culinary show.
This creature originally targeted areas densely packed with humans. Apparently, it could sense human life. Thanks to that, the cities of the Korean peninsula were devastated, and Ten Legs achieved a feat no politician had ever accomplished.
It took just five years.
-G̴̱̬̊r̵̻̘̊̕o̶̹͛͠o̷̫̿o̷̡͒͝ũ̵̖̊ủ̷̯̱ư̶̜͚͗ǵ̶̺h̵̺̰̿̈!̴̟̍
The Ten Legs roared.
"Fuck this."
We built our final line of defense at the Nakdong River, and in harmony, became Awakeners roasted on skewers. Even if we had given up on subduing it, as long as Ten Legs was alive, we were all merely living on borrowed time.
Fifth run over.
Sixth run start.
"Is there… really no answer to this?"
The fifth run ended in annihilation by Ten Legs, but looking at my entire life as a regressor, the run was tremendously significant. It was the one in which I acquired the Complete Memory ability. From that point on, I knew exactly what I had been thinking then, who I had met, and what conversations we'd had.
"Vice guild leader, do you have a moment?"
"Hm? What is it?"
Just as I was brooding over how the world was messing with humanity, the breakthrough came from an unexpected corner.
A guild member with pretty silver hair opened the sliding door of the KTX train and said, "A guest from outside has come to see you, vice guild leader."[2] It was Yu Ji-won, a talent I had scouted from the fifth run to serve as my deputy. She had quite a crazy psychopath streak.
But let's get into that later.
"An outsider guest? Where are they?"
"He's come all the way to our train platform."
"What? What's the security team doing?"
"They tried to stop him, but the guest was too strong for them. Keeping him waiting at the platform was the best they could manage."
"Hmm."
Why were we discussing this on a KTX train, you ask? Well... Samcheon World's base of operations was always on a train.
It wasn't because the members of Samcheon, including myself, found metaphysical beauty in a heap of immovable scrap metal. We were not railroad otakus.
No, it was entirely due to our boss, Her Highness Dang Seo-rin, and her taste. Dang Seo-rin had a peculiar habit of taking the most-intact luxury train and making it her base every time she moved the guild to a different region. In her own words, "Doesn't it have a certain charm, staying on a train as a witch?"
As you can tell from her wearing a cone hat, her mind was not exactly normal.
Anyway, back to the main story.
"So, what's the guest's name?"
"Yes, his name is... Emit... Schopenhawer? Ah, Schopenhauer."
Crackle.
My deputy tilted her head at the noise from the radio.
"He sounds like he's German?"
Emit Schopenhauer.
Swordmaster. Sword Star.
A man cloaked in many a nickname and who had sliced more monster heads still.
But to me, he was simply known as Old Man Scho.
"Um... hello?" I greeted in English before returning to Korean. "What brings you here?"
Old Man Scho looked at me in silence.
Honestly, my first impression was, He seems like a nasty character. It was still only the sixth run.
A German old man who had followed his wife to Korea only to get caught up in the Gate crisis. He hadn't learned Korean, so he tried to communicate using a mix of English, body language, and a smartphone translator.
If I had only been good at English, communication wouldn't have been an issue, but unfortunately, I had no talent for languages.
"Fucking monster."
"Fucking monster... You mean Ten Legs? The Lurker? Tentacles, flapping around?"
"Yes."
"Oh. Sorry, I can't speak English."
Old Man Scho grimaced, open frustration marring his expression as he let out a halting Korean. "Strategy. Different."
"...?"
"You died in past. Here."
In that KTX dining car, used as our guild's reception room, a map of South Korea was spread out on the table.
Thud. Old Man Scho pointed his finger at the center of that map.
The line from Seoul to Gwacheon. It was the place where I tried to beat Ten Legs without knowing anything but got beaten instead back in the fourth run.
"But you not die."
Fwish. Old Man Scho's finger pointed downwards, precisely indicating the Nakdong River.
"...!"
"Five years. Too big a difference."
Old Man Scho's grey gaze was directed straight at me.
Perhaps... No, surely not?
My heart thudded in my chest. We looked into each other's eyes across the table for a long time and realized that the flow of time was the same for both of us.
Old Man Scho's mouth slowly opened. "Return?"
Even though I could barely understand what he said, there was no way I could mistake the intent behind that question.
Wordlessly, I drew a number on the table with my finger.
Old Man Scho's expression finally relaxed and he smiled. It was the number of times he too had repeated his life.
Perhaps in consideration of my inability to understand English, Old Man Scho kept his sentences short. The old German swordsman knew how to convey emotions succinctly.
"My friend."
With Old Man Scho's joining, the dynamics on the battlefield changed.
If you asked me to name the most powerful Awakener among all I knew, every time, I invoke Old Man Scho. He was not merely a rocket of power, for even to this day, after more than 1000 runs, I would evaluate Old Man Scho's potential as insane.
"Are you sure we should put this man on the front line?"
"Yes, guild leader. I'm certain."
"Hmm. Doesn't look that reliable just from his appearance, but if my vice guild leader insists so strongly... Guess we should test his skills, right?"
"Certainly."
Fifty minutes later.
"Make this man a key player in this campaign immediately."
Again, Dang Seo-rin was a competent leader.
Even amidst the chaos of notable Awakeners being carried out on stretchers, she was completely unperturbed. She even went as far as to hire an interpreter to stick by Old Man Scho's side.
"Interpreter, could you ask him what he thinks about cone hats?"
It wasn't long before the interpreter's expression darkened. "I'm very sorry, ma'am, but he says he has no interest in joining the guild. He prefers to travel alone."
"Really? That's a shame. But did he just say 'Alohomora?' Did I hear that wrong?"
"Oh, I think he might have made a joke there, but I didn't catch it. Sorry, haha."
"That happens. Vice guild leader, isn't there a good pork soup place nearby? Germans like soup, right?"
"As long as it doesn't have turnips in it, he'd probably eat it."
I saw it. The interpreter beside me definitely cracked a smile.
He was indeed a wise man.
Back then, I didn't understand German, so I just let it go, but actually, Old Man Scho's remark was, "What kind of stupid shit is that? You mean that Harry Potter knock-off hat you wear? If I stay any longer, you'll probably start keeping owls too, huh? Alohomora, you moron![3] Even my dog wouldn't wear that."
And for the record, I agreed with him.
From the seventh run, I decided not to join the Samcheon Guild and instead began moving around with Old Man Scho, primarily because of those ridiculous cone hats. That fashion sense... Well, it wasn't even fashion. The only person who could pull off a witch cosplay was Dang Seo-rin.
It was as natural as natural could be.
Dang Seo-rin wasn't just playing witch; she was a grand sorceress and a multi-talented Awakener who genuinely claimed to be a witch.
"Undertaker, Sword Star. I need you to hold out for 25 minutes… No, make it 30."
South of the Han River was a cursed land where countless civilians evaporated in an instant, unaware of their fate.
There, a total of fifteen hundred Awakeners assembled, including Old Man Scho and guild leader Dang Seo-rin. If you included the military units and civilian volunteers, the number was even larger.
We stood on the front line, where almost all available forces in Korea were concentrated.
-G̶̲̈ͅr̶͚̮͝o̷̺̳͠͠o̸͓̙̿̚o̸̟̖̍u̵̗̗͂ú̴̞̩u̴͖̓͠g̶̖̹̃h̸̤̥͑̈́!̷̝̔͛
The familiar roar rang out.
In the distance, the massive body of Ten Legs began to reveal itself. The horizon trembled. Buildings turned to ruins, unable to withstand the creature's thrashing and crumbling like dry reeds.
"Twenty-five minutes. Can you hold out?"
"It will be difficult," I said on behalf of the strike team. However, there was a key difference from previous cycles. Now, I could add something more to my statement. "But we can manage it."
Dang Seo-rin nodded. "After this, let's go find some good places to eat. By the way, what's the signature dish of Seoul, anyway?"
"Hmm, I'm not sure there's anything particularly famous."
"Really?" Dang Seo-rin hummed, staring at the horizon. Tentacles resembling human arms writhed in abundance. "After today, it'll probably be octopus sashimi."
"Ah, marinated octopus isn't bad."
"Right? All troops, to your battle stations. Today, we reclaim Seoul."
Battle commencing.
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Footnotes:
[1] Samcheon means 'Three Thousand' in Korean.
[2] KTX trains are the subway trains of Korea.
[3] Alohomora, or the Unlocking Charm, is one of the most widely used spells in the fantasy series Harry Potter.