Translator: ZERO_SUGAR
Chapter 238
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The Transplanter III
As I mentioned before, I, the Undertaker, never dreamed in the conventional sense. In other words, if I ever did dream, it meant that at least one Anomaly had intervened.
The dream I had the day after barely stopping the Angel Descending incident in Pyongyang was no different.
“Hello, Guild Leader.”
“......”
“Oh my, looking at me like that will hurt my feelings, you know?”There she was, the pink-haired Lord Voldemort, smiling brightly right in front of me.
I barely managed to suppress a scream.
“...Go Yuri. Please, next time, can you at least change your appearance when you show up? I'm starting to develop a phobia of pink hair.”
“Haha, sorry about that. That's beyond my control... The form you’re most fond of is this. Perhaps you should try changing first.”
“Don’t lie. I’ve never met anyone with your face, and I’ve never had any particular fetish for pink hair.”
“True. It really is strange, isn’t it? Maybe we were connected in a past life?”
“Ha, as if. If this life is already such a mess, I can’t imagine how bad the last one was,” I scoffed, then looked around.
Dreams usually lacked meaning, but this space felt strangely significant. I was sitting in an old village bus, whose air smelled faintly of rubber. Across from me was Go Yuri, sitting primly in her seat. We were about a meter apart, staring at each other.
“So,” I began, “what’s this about? You rarely pop up in my dreams out of the blue like this.”
“Oh my, you say ‘pop up’ like I'm some kind of vermin. That choice of words really cuts deep, you know...”
Go Yuri put her hand to her cheek and sighed softly.
“When Miss Ah-ryeon calls you ‘Guild Leader,’ you treat her so gently. But I was the first guild member to call you that, remember?”
“We’re long past that. Get to the point.”
“I didn’t ‘pop up’ on my own, Guild Leader. You called me here.”
I swallowed hard. “...Bus No. 44. Was that Anomaly related to you?”
“That’s a funny nickname. You always like giving Anomalies names, don’t you, Guild Leader?”
Go Yuri covered her mouth and chuckled. It was the kind of laugh you’d describe as chittering, yet it didn’t seem to come from her direction. Instead, the laugh came from the speakers installed inside the bus, sparked with static.
Chh—kuk. Ahahaha—chhh, kuk.
“You know, I think you should actually thank me. If I hadn’t shown up in your dream tonight, you would have met me in reality instead. Would you have preferred that?”
“...No, I appreciate the warning.”
“You’re welcome!”
A streak of red paint appeared on the window behind Go Yuri, forming a crescent moon shape that dripped down like blood.
“Do you know what it means to give something a name? It can mean that you're trapping the existence within the word. However, it can also mean giving something a name like a parent does for a child.”
“......”
“There are very few words in the world that haven't passed over your tongue, Guild Leader. Have you realized you’re becoming something akin to the Father of All Things, or perhaps the Mother of All Anomalies?”
“...Not at all.”
To be honest, I hadn’t even considered that. But after hearing Go Yuri—no, after hearing the reflection of Go Yuri from my subconscious—say it, it hit me.
It actually made sense. When I stared into the Void, the Void stared back at me. An unchanging truth.
“The Anomalies don’t always appear at the exact moment you return, Guild Leader. In fact, the vast majority go unnoticed by anyone. But even before they appear, they’ve already been named in your mind.”
“...It’s like their moment of birth.”
“Yes. You recognize the Anomalies earlier than anyone else, and you give them names.” Go Yuri put a finger to her lips. “Just saying their names aloud, that alone begins a sort of ritual. Each time you regress, you're calling out to the universe, summoning all the Anomalies by name.”
Chzzzzzt!
The speaker spat out noise again.
- Come, Ten Legs, Administrator of the Infinite Metagame. Come, Village Bus No. 44. Come.
I listened silently.
“That’s why the Anomalies are drawn to you, Guild Leader. It’s like... Well, if I were to put it cutely, it’s as if they’re little children looking around for their parents. Whether they like their parents or not depends on the Anomaly, though.”
“Thanks for the advice. I’ll be more careful.”
- Ahahahahaha!
I pursed my lips. Instinctively, I understood what that mocking laugh from the speaker meant.
As long as I had Complete Memory, I couldn’t forget an Anomaly I had already recognized. The names had already been given. How could I “be careful” now?
“Have you ever felt like this?”
Go Yuri covered her mouth as she spoke.
We were definitely sitting a meter apart, but her voice felt like it was whispering right into my ear.
“Like you're taking a step forward, but the ground gives way beneath you like a swamp, and the deeper you go, the more you sink...”
With her mouth covered, I couldn't tell if Go Yuri’s lips were even moving. Yet her voice slid into my ears like molten candy melted under the sun—sticky and sickening.
“Like you’re not resetting the world with each regression, but rather, scraping at the edges with your nails, dragging it down bit by bit.”
“......”
“There’s a way out, Guild Leader. One way to see the ending.”
I blinked.
In the next instant, the bus, once occupied by only the two of us, was suddenly packed. The seats were filled with people who all had my face—everyone on the bus looked like an Undertaker. With blank expressions, each ‘Undertaker’ sat in their seats, paying no attention to Go Yuri or me.
“When you wake up from this dream—”
Whisper.
“Ride Village Bus No. 44, Guild Leader.”
“......”
“I don’t mean right away. Only after you’ve fully prepared Miss Ah-ryeon, please. Once you’ve Stopped Time, ask her if she can briefly wound everyone’s internal organs.”
Whisper, whisper.
“Then, once time resumes, hop on the bus immediately. Miss Ah-ryeon can keep healing you from the outside while you’re on board.”
Ta-da...
Go Yuri whispered softly.
“Wow, then everyone in the world will become just like you! A regressor’s paradise! After Superhuman Slayer, we’d have a new race: the Race of Regressors.”
“......”
“Haha, if the world feels too large, you could start with just one or two people. You often long for Schopenhauer, but who knows? Making companions might be simpler than you think.”
Becoming one.
That’s what Go Yuri called it.
“What do you think, Guild Leader?”
“Well, it’s certainly a strategy I hadn’t considered. I’ll think about it.”
“That’s a lie.”
“......”
Thud.
The bus began to move. The engine rattled, and it started heading somewhere.
Outside the windows, the scenery blurred by too quickly. Night and day switched without pause, casting fleeting shadows across Go Yuri’s face.
“No matter where you go, no matter what your final stop is, Guild Leader, I’ll always support you. But you’ve already passed by quite a few stops.”
“......”
“Don’t forget that.”
Thud, thud, thud.
The sound of the village bus's vibrations shifted into the rumble of a subway, and the interior stretched out into a long train car. The lights flickered. The Undertakers seated around us began to stretch and split apart, bursting as their bodies tore open.
And then, I woke up.
“H-huh.”
Before me stood Ah-ryeon, looking at me with wide eyes.
“You're... You're awake...”
“The Saintess’s duties?”
“I-I just finished! As you instructed, I used the Blessing of Christ Mo Gwang-seo to cover the traces of the descending angels and turned the area into a sanctuary.”
“Good. Our Ah-ryeon has worked hard.”
“Hehe, please... P-praise me more.”
Ah-ryeon beamed.
Her smile oddly reminded me of Go Yuri’s.
It wasn’t that I was confusing the two of them. It was just that Go Yuri’s warning from the dream kept echoing in my head.
"You give Anomalies their names earlier than anyone else."
Go Yuri had warned me that this would reduce me to the role of ‘the parent of Anomalies.’
But was that really true?
The first thoughts that came to mind after my regression weren’t just about Anomalies. I thought of the people I couldn’t save in previous runs, of Seo Gyu with his head about to be severed, of Ah-ryeon trembling in a corner.
‘Do I value human smiles over the extinction of Anomalies?’
The answer was yes. In the early days of my regressions, perhaps I wouldn’t have been so sure. But now, the answer was clear.
Like a sail that filled with wind whenever I faced the breeze, this answer wrapped around my heart. As long as that answer remained, I would never lose my way, no matter which seas I crossed.
“Our Ah-ryeon is the best.”
“Hehe...”
In the midst of this boundless sea, I patted the head of the woman who had become the wind in my sails.
The wind smiled in my palm.
There is an epilogue.
"Let’s draw a bus route map."
Back in Busan, I proposed this during a meeting. Do-hwa, seated at the round table, tilted her head in confusion.
"A bus route map...?"
"Yes. The organs of passengers on Village Bus No. 44 are transferred randomly, without any clear destination. This is likely because the bus doesn’t have a defined route."
I drew a quick map on the chalkboard.
Ⓞ Hwang Seo-young’s pancreas (54, Busan)
ⓞ Kim Jin-cheol’s cornea (11, Sejong)
ⓞ Namgung Hee-young’s lungs (37, Pohang)
ⓞ Park Da-ram’s kidney (21, Busan)...
The result was a typical bus route map, except that the "stops" were people's names and organs.
"We’ll prepare a list of patients in need of transplants and organize them in order. Then, for volunteers, they can freely choose which 'stops'—people—they’d like to donate their organs to."
"Oh..."
"Friends, family, acquaintances, or even someone they’ve just encountered by chance. It’s a way for people to select who they want to give their organs to after they pass."
In the apocalypse, suicide rates had skyrocketed. There were more reasons to leave this world than to stay in it. Even so, many would be willing to donate their organs if it meant helping those left behind.
When people boarded Bus No. 44, they usually died instantly without time to feel any pain. The process of organ donation could become quick, easy, and precise.
"Not just suicides, but even elderly individuals might choose to donate their organs. Since the Village Bus can appear anywhere, it’s accessible to everyone."
"Hmm..."
While the term “donation” might evoke the idea of a noble, voluntary act, I saw it as simply the efficient distribution of resources.
The apocalypse was brutal. Even human bodies had to be used efficiently.
Despite the critical flaw of Village Bus No. 44, as long as we were cautious of Anomalies like Mo Gwang-seo’s Christ, it was still worth utilizing.
After listening to my entire presentation, Do-hwa sneered an answer.
“Well, it sounds... effective.”
Soon after, "bus route maps" and "stop lists" were distributed across the country. Whenever there was a need to update the route, revised versions were uploaded to SG Net first, and guilds all over the country would make the necessary changes so that the public could access the updated stop names.
Occasionally, incidents of innocent people being forcibly pushed onto the bus arose, but the Saintess usually managed to detect and prevent such tragedies in advance.
From that day onward, I sometimes saw elderly people sitting under bus stop signs, a crumpled piece of paper in hand.
Those old men and women would sit there, squinting up and down the street, waiting for the bus to come, with notes listing the names of the stops where they wanted to leave a trace of themselves.
They’d unfold those notes from time to time, reading them over.
Then, at some point, the Village Bus No. 44 would appear, as if out of thin air, in front of the stop.
The elderly person would grip their note tightly in one hand and use the other to support themselves with a cane as they boarded the bus.
And into thin air, the green village bus would vanish, leaving behind only the smell of exhaust.
"......"
Choosing to leave something behind for someone, even as you leave this life.
Perhaps, in the delicate weight of those old people pressing their canes into the ground as they boarded the bus, lay the reason I always chose humans over Anomalies.
Wasn’t humanity clinging to the tip of that cane?
‘Go Yuri, the day I accept your offer will never come.’
In the end, the terminus for one person might just be a brief stop for another to rest.
That’s why I hoped—
That when my journey ended, I wouldn’t rule over the final stop for all mankind, but rather, be just another stop along the way for the children who followed.
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